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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



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GVSTAWS ADOLPHVS D.G. REX SVEC.CtOTH: 
ET YAND. MAGNVS PRINCEPS FINLANIXE DVXETC. 



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■ROM I'ORTRAIT NOW IN MUNICH 



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(threat Captains 



GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS 



A HISTORY OF THE ART OF WAR FROM ITS RE- 
VIVAL AFTER THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE END 
OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION WAR, WITH A 
DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE CAMPAIGNS OF 
THE GREAT SWEDE, AND OF THE MOST FAMOUS 
CAMPAIGNS OF TURENNE, CONDE\ EUGENE AND 
MARLBOROUGH. 



WITH 237 CHARTS, MAPS, PLANS OF BATTLES AND 

TACTICAL MANOEUVRES, CUTS OF UNIFORMS, 

ARMS, AND WEAPONS 



THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE 

BREVET LIEUTENANT-COLONEL UNITED STATES ARMY, RETIRED LIST ; AUTHOR OF " THE 
CAMPAIGN OF CHANCELLORSVILLE," "a BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF OUR CIVIL WAR," 
" PATROCLUS AND PENELOPE. A CHAT IN THE SADDLE," " GREAT CAP- 
TAINS," "ALEXANDER," " HANNIBAL," " CvESAR," ETC., ETC. 




<^ ^x 



OL 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Che EtoersiUe JPrcss, Cambridge 

1895 




Copyright, 1895, 
By THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE. 

All rights reserved. 



(The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. 



To 
THE AMERICAN SOLDIER 

WHO, NOT BRED TO ARMS, BUT NURTURED BY INDEPENDENCE, HAS ACHIEVED 
THE PROUDEST RANK AMONG THE VETERANS OF HISTORY 

W^tit WalumtH 
ARE DEDICATED 



" Faites la guerre offensive comme Alexandre, Annibal, Char, 
Gustave Adolphe, Turenne, le prince Eugene et Fridiric ; lisez, reli- 
sez Vhistoire de leur quatre-vingt-huit campagnes ; modelez-vous sur 
euXj — c ' es f l e seul moyen de devenir grand capitaine et de surprendre 
le sicret de I'art ; voire genie, ainsi eclairi, vous fera rejeter des max- 
imes opposees a celles de ces grands hommes." — Napoleon. 

" La tactique, les Evolutions, la science de Vofficier de gSnie, de 
Vofficier d 'artillerie peuvent s'apprendre dans les traiUs; — mais la 
connaissance de la grande tactique ne s'acquiert que par I 'experience 
etpar V etude de Vhistoire des campagnes de tous les grands capitaines." 
— Napoleon. 



PREFACE. 



That the immense gap of sixteen and a half centuries which 
intervenes between the last campaign of Julius Caesar and the 
first campaign of Gustavus Adolphus is left almost untouched, 
must be justified by once more reminding the reader that the 
author has made no attempt to cover the history of war, but 
seeks only to indicate the origin and growth of what to-day 
we call the art of war. No preface, however long, can explain 
the purpose of the volumes of which the present is one, so 
well as the few words of Napoleon which have been chosen 
as a motto, and which follow the dedicatory page. " Read, 
reread the history of their eighty-eight campaigns," says this 
last of the Great Captains. A history of the origin and 
growth of the art of war is in reality only the story of the 
campaigns of those leaders whose deeds have created the art. 
The history of war is beyond limit ; to treat it in equal 
detail would call for hundreds of volumes, and the author 
has contemplated no such work. 

A distinguished professor of history 1 recently wrote the 
author : " You will have an embarrassing wealth of material 
in the military changes from Csesar to Gustavus Adolphus. 
As I run over the time, I see how you can use your narrative 
skill on the slaughter of the legions of Varus in the Teuto- 
wald ; the hurried marches of Aurelian while his soldiers 
sung that wild song of slaughter given by Flavius Vopiscus ; 
the Goths of Alaric and the Huns of Attila. and the struggle 
1 Samuel Willard, LL. D. 



viii PREFACE. 

of armed mobs at Chalons ; the skillful work of Belisarius ; 
the saving of Europe by Leo the Isaurian, to whose work the 
picturesque battle of Tours was but a supplement ; the cam- 
paigns of Charlemagne, earliest in modern times to march 
converging columns upon an enemy ; knights and crusaders, 
and that greatest of all cavalry battles, greatest that ever was 
or ever will be, Dorylseum ; the Normans at Hastings ; the 
Swiss piling up the rampart of ten thousand dead at St. 
Jacobs ; the vain charge of Talbot, representative of the out- 
going chivalry, against cannon and earthworks at Chatillon ; 
these, and two score more of the illustrations of the change 
from the old to the new, — how can you leave them out — how 
can you put them in? " And just because none of these acts 
in the drama of history had any influence on the art of war, it 
is not within the scope of this work to narrate them. Many 
of the deeds of the Great Captains, indeed, had no such 
influence ; but though these may none the less have found a 
place in their general military history, there is nothing to 
warrant the author in going outside of the Great Captains to 
dilate upon mere acts of heroism or mere scenes of carnage. 

Hence, though the period between Munda in 45 B. C. and 
the Danish campaign of 1611 is dismissed with a mere sum- 
mary, the author does not believe that he has left any gap 
unfilled in the actual history of the art of war ; and as its 
revival began with Gustavus Adolphus and was carried for- 
ward more or less expertly by his successors, it will be found 
that from the beginning of the seventeenth century down to 
1815, the narrative in this and future volumes will cover most 
of the important wars. 

Every nation, in gazing at the glories which surround its 
victories and its heroes, is apt to lose sight of the comparative 
standing of the latter. To the Prussian, Frederick the Only 
stands out unequaled ; to the Scandinavian, Gustavus ; to the 



PREFACE. ix 

Frenchman, Napoleon ; to the Austrian, Prince Eugene or 
the Archduke Charles ; to the Englishman, Marlborough or 
Wellington. It is only when each of these generals is 
grouped with the others on the theatre of war where he 
played his part, that one can properly gauge his place among 
the captains. To some of us Anglo-Saxons it may seem 
heresy to assume that Prince Eugene was equal as a general 
to the Duke of Marlborough. And yet, such was the case. 
Alone, he conducted more successful campaigns, he won more 
victories and he did more first-rate work than Marlborough ; 
while at Blenheim, Oudenarde and Malplaquet, he bore half 
the burden and won half the renown. When the facts are 
looked at dispassionately, the place assigned to each of the 
great generals in these volumes will, it is believed, be borne 
out by the mature judgment of any military student not suf- 
fering from patriotic astigmatism. 

It is comparatively easy to write up a campaign without a 
map. This tell-tale absent, errors can be more easily covered ; 
a general allegation will suffice for a more specific one. But 
the author has striven to so illustrate his work with charts 
as that every statement may be readily checked off by refer- 
ence to the terrain. The ancient maps of the country and of 
battle-fields, while full of information and suggestiveness, are 
apt to be topographically wrong and hence misleading ; it is 
hoped the maps and charts in this volume will prove more 
acceptable. The same care has been expended on them by 
personal visits to the battle-fields as was given to former 
volumes ; but they are intended rather to illustrate the text 
and to aid in comprehending the campaigns than as samples 
of the geographer's art. The amount of ground to be covered 
has resulted in their being made on a smaller scale than here- 
tofore. 

Little space could be spared for the exploits of individual 



x PREFACE. 

generals or divisions ; the battle descriptions have been con- 
fined to what was strictly essential to a clear understanding 
of the manoeuvres. Particular heroism has been rarely men- 
tioned ; except in the case of the leading generals, it does not 
fit into the scheme of the work. 

Dates in the old records are inaccurate and puzzling ; but 
the New Style (ten days later than the Old Style) has been 
followed, — it is hoped without many errors. The political 
history of the times has been only incidentally mentioned ; 
the author can scarcely vouch for its being free from error, — 
he pretends to no knowledge of the intricate state imbroglios 
of the sixteenth century. 

The authorities to which this volume is indebted are very 
numerous. Having no knowledge of Swedish, the author has 
been obliged to rely upon German, French or Italian transla- 
tions of the home records ; but such eminent men as Droysen 
have carefully covered this ground ; and most of the better 
class of historical works, such as Geijer's Sveriges Historia, 
or Gustavus' Letters, exist in German. Moreover, the cam- 
paigns which made Gustavus forever great were rather a part 
of the history of Germany than of Sweden. 

The following works, among others, have been laid under 
contribution, some of them very freely: Arkenholtz, Beau- 
rain, Biilow, Chemnitz, Coxe, Desormeaux, Droysen, Duvivier, 
Dudik, Feuquieres, Forster, Gallitzin, Gfrorer, Grimoard, 
Gualdo Priorato, Harte, Hurter, Julius, Kausler, Keym, 
Khevenhuller, Lediard, Lossau, Mauvillon, Oman, Puffen- 
dorf, Quincy, Ramsay, Ranke, Swedish Intelligencer, Soden, 
Le Soldat Suedois, Sporschill, Theatrum Europaeum, Viller- 
mont, Voltaire, Zaber, Zanthier, a great number of memoirs, 
dispatches and letters of many of the generals, and old 
Netherland, Niirnberg and other German records. The au- 
thor has drawn from too many eminent historians and critics 



PREFACE. xi 

to do less than acknowledge gratefully his indebtedness to 
each and all. But he has uniformly got his best suggestions 
from visits to the battle-fields, which, however changed in 
minor details, still remain substantially as they were. 

The volume perhaps errs in being bulky ; but the reader 
can readily understand that it would have been easier to 
write thrice the number of pages than to condense so vast 
a subject into what may be placed between two covers. It 
is a far more satisfactory task to go into the minute details 
of a single campaign than to deal superficially with the 
manoeuvres of many; but though the scheme of this work 
necessitates in places severe condensation, the author trusts 
that no important matter distinctly contributory to the art of 
war has been slighted. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER 



PAGE 



I. The Era of Cavalry. 378-1315 .... 1 
II. Reappearance of Infantry. 1315-1500 . . 10 

III. Changes in Tactics. — Sixteenth Century . .22 

IV. The Swedish Army-Changes. 1523-1632 . 28 
V. The Swedish Organization and Tactics. 1611- 

1632 47 

VI. The Young Prince and King. 1611-1617 . 63 
VII. The Polish Wars.- 1617-1625 .... 79 
VIII. The Thirty Years' War. Religious Phase. 

1618-1625 86 

IX. The Danish Period. 1625-1630 . . . .100 
X. The Polish Wars continue. 1625-1627 . . 117 
XL The Polish Wars end. 1628-1629 . . .131 
XII. The Swedish Period begins. January to June, 

1630 145 

XIII. GUSTAVUS LANDS IN GERMANY. JUNE TO AUGUST, 

1630 . . . 157 

xiv. gustavus attacks the enemy. september to 

December, 1630 . . . . . . .172 

XV. Winter - Quarters at Barwalde. January, 

1631 192 

xvi. gustavus and tllly manceuvre. february to 

April, 1630 201 

XVII. Magdeburg. September, 1630, to May, 1631 • 215 
xviii. gustavus advances to the elbe. june and 

July, 1631 229 

XIX. Tilly invades Hesse-Cassel and Saxony. Au- 
gust, 1631 244 



xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

XX. Breitenfeld. September 17, 1631 . . . 257 
XXI. Towards the Main. September and October, 

1631 . & 272 

XXII. Mainz. November, 1631 288 

XXIII. To the Danube. December, 1631, to April, 1632 301 

XXIV. The Crossing of the Lech. April 15, 1632 . 312 
XXV. The Reappearance of Wallenstein. January 

to June, 1632 . . . . .' . .325 

XXVI. Nurnberg. July and August, 1632 . . . 341 
XXVII. The Assault on the Alte Veste. September, 

1632 353 

XXVIII. Sparring. September, 1632 . . . .364 

XXIX. Back to Saxony. October and November, 1632 373 

XXX. Lutzen. November 16, 1632 . . . .386 

XXXI. The Man and Soldier 398 

XXXII. Nordlingen. 1633-1634 412 

XXXIII. Cromwell. 1642-1651 421 

XXXIV. Turenne. 1634 to August, 1644 .... 437 
XXXV. Conde at Rocroy. May 19, 1643 . . . .450 

XXXVI. Freiburg. August, 1644 458 

XXXVII. Mergentheim. May 5, 1645 468 

XXXVIII. Allerheim. August 5, 1645 . . . .478 
XXXIX. Conde at Dunkirk. September and October, 

1646 488 

XL. Turenne and Wrangel. 1646-1647 . . .497 

XLI. The Thirty Years' War ends. 1648 . . .507 

XLII. Conde against Turenne. 1650-1656 . . .519 

XLIII. Arras and Valenciennes. 1654-1656 . . . 540 

XLIV. Dunkirk. The Battle of the Dunes, 1657. May 

and June, 1658 553 

XLV. Army Organization and Tactics Early Seven- 
teenth to Early Eighteenth Century . . 569 
XLVI. Turenne in Holland. 1672 .... 582 

XL VII. Montecuculi. 1673 592 

XL VIII. Senef, August 11, and Sinsheim, June 16, 1674 602 
XLIX. Entzheim, October 4, 1674. Turkheim, January 

5, 1675 . . .614 

L. Turenne's Last Campaign. 1675 . . . 633 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. xv 

LI. The Siege of Vienna. 1683 645 

LII. Luxemburg and Catinat. 1690-1693 . . * . 655 
LIII. Prince Eugene against C vtinat. 1701 . . 668 

LIV. Eugene against Villerov and Vendome. 1701- 

1702 681 

LV. Villars. 1703 697 

LVI. Marlborough and Eugene. 1704 . . . 709 

LYII. Blenheim. August 13, 1704 723 

LVIII. Eugene and Vendome. 1705 .... 737 

LIX. Eamillies. May 23, 1706 750 

LX. Turin. September 7, 1706 757 

LXI. Oudenarde and Lille. July 11 and October 22, 

1708 769 

LXII. Malplaquet. September 11, 1709 .... 792 

LXIII. Spain. 1704-1710 810 

LXIV. Villars against Marlborough and Eugene. 1710- 

1712 817 

LXV. Charles XII. 1700-1709 831 

Appendix A. Some Modern Marches 849 

Appendix B. Casualties in Some Modern Battles . . 850 
Index 853 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

Portrait of Gustavus, after Van Dyke (Munich Gallery) 

Frontispiece 

Knight, (loth Century) 6 

Dismounted Knight. (13th Century) .7 

Knight. (15th Century) 7 

Knight in Armor. (13th Century) 8 

Knight. (12th Century) 9 

Swiss Halberdier. (16th Century) 11 

Swiss Sergeant Halberdier 11 

Swiss Pikeman. (16th Century) 11 

Swiss Captain. (16th Century) 12 

Lance and Halberd Heads. (16th Century) 12 

Bernese Soldiers. (15th Century) 13 

Swiss Pikeman. (16th Century) 13 

Genevese Mercenary. (15th Century) 14 

English Long-bowman. (14th Century) 14 

English Long-bowman. (14th Century) 14 

Cross-bowman. (12th Century) 15 

Cross-bowman. (12th Century) 15 

Cross-bowman. (15th Century) 15 

Cross-bowmen. (15th Century) . . . . . . . 16 

Hand Gun .18 

Bombard of Rhodes (calibre, 22 in.) 18 

Big Cannon. (15th Century) ........ 18 

Bombardelle. (15th Century) 19 

French Gun. (15th Century) 19 

Hand Bombardelle. (15th Century) 19 

Mounted Culverineer 19 

Cross-bow. (15th Century) 20 

Cross-bow. (15th Century) 20 



xviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Hand Culverin, 1480 21 

Arquebusier, 1507 21 

Officer. (14th Century) 27 

Danzig Citizen Soldier (taking oath) ...... 32 

Lansquenet. (16th Century) 33 

Musketeer, 1572 .33 

Pikeman, 1534 34 

Pikeman, 1572 34 

Grenadier, 1696 .......... 35 

Officer of French Foot, 1647 35 

Arquebus and Rest. (16th Century) ,36 

Musketeer, 1630 36 

Match-lock, Stockholm Museum 37 

Wheel-lock, Stockholm Museum .37 

Pistol Flint-lock (1613), Stockholm Museum .... 37 

Early Bayonets 38 

English Soldier (unequipped) 39 

German Officer, 1630 39 

Dragoon, 1616 40 

Hungarian Irregular. (17th Century) 40 

Croat 41 

Siege-guns, Stockholm Museum ....... 42 

Three-pounder Regimental Gun, Stockholm Museum ... 43 
Three-pounder Leather Gun, Stockholm Museum . . . .43 

Early Mortars 44 

Early Mortar . . . .44 

Culverin, 1500 46 

Suit worn by Gustavus at the Dirschau Combat . . . .49 

Swedish Musketeer ......... 50 

Swedish Pikeman 50 

Swedish Officer .......... 51 

Swedish Cuirassier .......... 52 

Swedish Ensign of Cuirassiers '....... 53 

Cannon suggested in the 15th Century 62 

Axel Oxenstiern 68 

Sweden and the Baltic 71 

Riga 82 

Arquebus. (16th Century) 85 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xix 

The Bohemian Revolt 91 

Tilly 95 

Tilly's Manoeuvres in Baden 97 

Halberd with Gun (16th Century) ,99 

Christian of Denmark 103 

Map of Danish Period 104 

Wallenstein . 105 

Stralsund, partly from an old plan Ill 

Genevese. (16th Century) 116 

Polish Horseman .......... 118 

The Vistula-Oder-Elbe Country 120 

Danzig and Vicinity 122 

Operation at Mewe ......... 124 

Stuhm Operation 138 

Albanese Horseman 144 

The Landing-place 158 

Oder-Elbe Country 160 

Stettin 162 

Pikeman of Thirty Years' War 171 

Bibnitz 174 

The Attack on Garz 188 

" Advance Pikes ! " 191 

Swiss Pikehead. (15th Century) 200 

Demmin 202 

Frankfort . 211 

Halberd Head 214 

Magdeburg 221 

Swiss Sword. (15th Century) 228 

The Werben Camp ' . . .239 

Burgstall Operation 241 

Horse and Equipments used by Gustavus at Liitzen . . . 243 

Elbe-Main Country . 245 

Leipsic and Breitenfeld 249 

Brigade and Half-brigade . 256 

Tbe Armies in Line 262 

Battle of Breitenfeld. (2d Phase) 267 

Gustavus, by Van Mierevelt 271 

The Main Country 284 



xx LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Mainz 292 

Laudskneckt. (16th Century) 300 

Statue of Gustavus Adolphus in Stockholm ..... 311 

The Upper Danube Country 313 

Crossing of the Lech 315 

Match-lock. (15th Century) ■ 324 

Niirnberg 338 

Arquebus. (16th Century) 340 

The Rival Camps 342 

Swords. (16th Century) 352 

Gustavus Adolphus, from Augsburg bust 363 

A Burgundian. (15th Century) 372 

Region near Liitzen ......... 378 

Gustavus praying before Liitzen . . . ... . . 385 

Battle of Liitzen 387 

Musket Battle-axe. (16th Century) 397 

Fusee Arrows .......... 411 

Battle of Nordlingen 417 

French Sergeant, 1630 420 

Cromwell ............ 424 

Battle of Marston Moor 425 

Battle of Naseby 428 

Battle of Dunbar 432 

Battle of Worcester 434 

Pistol Sword. (16th Century) 436 

Turenne ............ 440 

The Rhine Country 446 

Freiburg ............ 448 

French Halberdiers. (15th Century) 449 

Conde - at Rocroy 450 

Battle of Rocroy 452 

French Musketeer, 1647 457 

Freiburg Battles 459 

Philipsburg ..... 464 

French Infantry Soldier, 1660 467 

Operation of Mergentheim 471 

Battle of Mergentheim 473 

French Dragoon. (17th Century) . . . . . . .477 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxi 

Battle of Allerheim 479 

Norman Soldier. (7th Century) 487 

Vicinity of Dunkirk 489 

Dunkirk . .491 

Crusader's Cannon 496 

Nidda Operation . 499 

Kirchheim Operation . . 502 

Breech-loading Portable Gun. (15th Century) .... 506 

Zumarshausen Operation 508 

Battle of Lens . . . ■ 515 

Three-barreled Carbine. (16th Century.) 518 

Belgium and Northern France ........ 520 

Battle of Champ Blanc 523 

Operation of Gien 525 

Paris-Orleans Country 526 

Vicinity of Paris 528 

Battle of St. Antoine 530 

Campaign on the Somme . . . . . . . . . 536 

Portable Gun. (15th Century) 539 

Arras 542 

Operation on the Scheldt ........ 546 

Valenciennes . -. . 549 

Knight. (15th Century) 552 

Dunkirk and the Battle of the Dunes . .... 559 

French Dragoon. (17th Century) ...... 568 

Army on the March 574 

Pistol Sword. (16th Century) 581 

Holland 585 

Pistol Sword. (16th Century) ....... 591 

Montecuculi 593 

Turenne-Montecuculi Operation ....... 595 

Garde Du Corps, 1688 601 

Conde- (late in life) .603 

Battle of Senef 604 

Sinsheim Operation ...."..... 607 

Battle of Sinsheim 610 

French Musketeer. (End of 17th Century) 613 

Entzheim Operation 619 



xxii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Battle of Entzheim 620 

Ttirkkeim Operation 627 

Battle of Tiirkkeim 630 

French Carbine. (16th Century) 632 

Terrain of 1675 Campaign 634 

Campaign of 1675 635 

Mounted Arquebusier. (16th Century) 644 

Vienna-Ofen Country 646 

Turkish Soldier 647 

Turkish Soldier 648 

Siege of Vienna 651 

Polish Cavalryman ......... 653 

Luxemburg ........... 656 

Battle of Fleurus 657 

Catinat 658 

Battle of Steenkirke 660 

Battle of Neerwinden 663 

Battle of Marsaglia ......... 666 

French Musketeer. (17th Century) 667 

Prince Eugene .......... 671 

Zenta Campaign 672 

North Italy 676 

Chiari Operation 682 

Vendome 686 

Battle of Luzzara .......... 689 

Duke of Marlborough ......... 692 

French Cannon. (16th Century) 696 

Villars 700 

The Rhine-Danube Country 702 

Cannon Royal. (16th Century) 708 

Assault on the Schellenberg 714 

French Mortar. (16th Century) .722 

Battle of Blenheim 725 

Four-barreled Gun. (16th Century) 736 

Battle of Cassano . 740 

The Line of the Dyle 747 

Culverin. (16th Century) 749 

Battle of Ramillies 752 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxiii 

Northern Italy 758 

The Battle of Turin 763 

Pike Breaker. (16th Century) 768 

Battle of Oudenarde 776 

Brussels-Lille Kegion 783 

Siege of Lille 785 

Battle of Malplaquet . .801 

Bombard. (15th Century) 809 

Spain 811 

Heavy Cavalryman. (16th Century) . . ... . . 816 

Douay Region ....."...... 818 

Quesnoy-Landrecies Region 824 

Roofed Gun. (16th Century) 830 

Campaigns of Charles XII. 832 

Narva 834 

The Dwina 837 

Pultowa 846 

Russian Soldier 847 

Turkish Soldier 848 



GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. 



I. 

THE ERA OF CAVALRY. 378-1315. 

As the ranks became filled with mercenaries, the Roman legion fell from its 
high estate. Hand to hand tactics gave way to missile weapons, the bow came 
into fashion, and ballistic machines and portable stakes appeared in fine of 
battle. The barbarians grew in efficiency beyond the legionaries, and to pro- 
tect the vast frontier of the empire, cavalry came to be essential. Adrianople 
proved that horse could ride down foot, and mounted service became the more 
honorable. German cavalry, enlisted by the emperors, proved its preeminence, 
and the footman sank into insignificance. While the western nations relied on 
hard knocks, the Byzantines kept up a species of military art, — one of form 
and stratagem, rather than pure tactics or strategy, in which valor was prized, 
but discretion ranked higher. The Teutonic races depended on stout infantry : 
in their great raids there was little horse. Feudalism introduced the mailed 
knight, who for centuries reigned supreme. Useful in holding back the Moor, 
the Viking and the Magyar, he was not a soldier in the best sense ; his in- 
stability equaled his courage. He knew but one tactics, — to charge straight 
at the enemy, — and he was frequently routed by bad ground. Armies were 
set up in deep squares, and accident often decided the day. Armored mercena- 
ries succeeded the knights, but were no better. Feudalism called for castles ; 
castles led to a war of sieges. Of strategy and tactics there was none. The 
Crusades were full of prowess ; they gave us no military lessons, except that of 
blind devotion. 

The feature characterizing the history of the art of war, 
from the fall of the Roman empire to the era of the Refor- 
mation, is the rise of cavalry as the main reliance of nations, 
and the corresponding decadence of infantry. This condition 
lasted for many centuries, until the English long-bow and the 



2 THE LEGION DEGENERATES. 

Swiss pike and halberd, coupled to the growth of firearms, 
again reduced the horseman to his true level. Cavalry is an 
essential arm ; even the rapid-firing weapon of to-day cannot 
quite displace it ; but it is neither fitted to stand alone, nor 
to dominate infantry. Only when the footman is the main 
reliance of the commander can the art of war reach its highest 
development. 

We have seen how the Roman legion, which was at its 
zenith when the burgess-soldier's stanch courage put a term 
to Hannibal's splendid bid for the conquest of Italy, degen- 
erated by easy and natural gradations until it became a merely 
mercenary body, unable to cope with the barbarian invaders 
of the peninsula. In proportion as it forfeited character it 
became burdened with ballistic machines, it grew unwieldy, 
and lost so much of its marching speed that, to have at hand 
forces which could effectually be transferred from one threat- 
ened point on the enormous imperial frontier to another, the 
Emperor Constantine began to increase the cavalry by taking 
from each legion its auxiliary turmae, and collecting these 
into large bodies destined to serve alone. 

The enemies of Rome, moreover, were no longer the ill- 
armed savages of yore. Their weapons and accoutrements 
had been vastly improved by contact with the empire, and the 
legion could not slash its way through a body of mere human 
brawn, — still less so with its own diminished stanchness. 
That the old Roman quality had perished was abundantly 
proven by the numerous ballistic machines, and by the beams 
and stakes carried along on pack-mules, not for the ancient 
purpose of intrenching the nightly camp, but to save the 
legion from cavalry attacks on the field of battle. These 
supplementary engines and tools meant that the legion had 
been reduced to an un-Roman defensive. 

In the battle of Adrianople (a. d. 378), the Gothic squad- 



CAVALRY DESTROYS AN ARMY. 3 

rons accomplished what cavalry had never compassed since 
Hannibal's Numidians waded in the gore of Cannae, — they 
destroyed a Roinan army. This battle was the capstone to 
the belief that it was more honorable to fight on horseback 
than on foot, for the Goth had found that, unassisted, he could 
ride down the vaunted Roman legionary. While this was 
due more to the deterioration of the foot than to the meliora- 
tion of the horse, yet while the latter continued to gain, the 
former continued to lose. For a thousand years to come 
cavalry was uppermost. It naturally deemed itself the supe- 
rior of foot, as indeed it became and remained, — until the 
long-bow of the hardy British yeoman mowed down the super- 
cilious French chivalry at Crecy. 

Adrianople made it evident that the legions alone could no 
longer uphold the Roman supremacy. 

With this lesson in mind, Theodosius began to enlist bands 
of Teutonic chiefs, and from now on the Roman soldier quite 
lost caste, and the barbarian horseman became the pillar of 
the empire. Indeed, he proved his right to the title by riding 
down the veteran Gallic legions which had risen under 
Magnus Maximus, and by more than one other noteworthy 
deed of prowess. 

Another change soon became apparent. The Roman foot- 
man, already used to the support of ballistic machines and 
portable stakes in the line of battle, began to rely more and 
more on missile weapons, and to discard the arms of close 
quarters. The bow for the first time became a Roman weapon. 
Not but what the bow is an admirable arm, especially against 
cavalry ; it has asserted itself at intervals from remotest 
ages ; but it was a new thing to see the Roman legionary take 
kindly to long-distance weapons, and a thing to excite one's 
pity. 

Cavalry reigned supreme. At a later day the Gothic horse- 



4 BYZANTINE ART. 

man rode to and fro throughout Italy, and still further proved 
that infantry, such as the Roman legion had then become, 
was no match for the best of mounted troops. All Europe 
soon vied in arming and training cavalry, and infantry sank 
to a still lower level. It was fit only for garrison duty, — to 
defend walls. The Roman cavalry ended by adopting the 
bow, and became the same body which had annihilated 
Crassus on the plains of Mesopotamia. Horse-archers and 
horse-lancers were the choice of the day. The latter, the 
heavy squadrons, were more unwieldy, but they were able at 
least to ride down the Oriental horse-archer. 

It was thus arose all over Europe the idea that cavalry 
should be the chief and only arm ; the idea that mounted 
service alone was honorable ; the idea that the footman was 
a sloven and a coward. 

The Byzantines were, in matters military, the legitimate 
successors of the old Roman empire. Their armies for cen- 
turies held back the barbarian inroads from the east ; they 
were, during their life, the best of their kind. They have 
been much disparaged by historians, and in a sense it is true 
that the Byzantines were not successful ; but for all that, 
they had an art in their wars, while in the west of Europe 
thews and sinews won the day. And while the doughty blows 
of the Frank appeal to our Saxon instinct of manliness rather 
than the ambush, stratagem and studied method of the 
Byzantme, yet the latter showed more intelligence in what 
he did and in the way he did it. Several books of tactics re- 
main to us from this era, and the means of successfully com- 
bating the various races that might be met — Frank, Magyar 
or Saracen — were assiduously discussed. Moreover the 
eastern emperors did succeed in holding their territory 
against western assaults for generations. 

The strength of the Byzantines lay in their heavy cavalry, 



THE PERIOD OF CHAOS. 5 

and this they set up in two lines and a reserve, whose three 
successive shocks told well. Courage was valued highly, but 
discretion and a knowledge of how to utilize varying condi- 
tions were deemed a better quality. Bull-headed pluck was 
not so highly considered as it was in the west ; stratagem 
showed a higher kind of soldierly ability, — even treachery 
held its place in the Byzantine scheme. A similar tendency 
was shown in the seventeenth century in the preference of 
manoeuvres over battles ; and was not Hannibal called per- 
fidious because he resorted to ruse in his unequal struggle 
against ponderous Rome ? Despite these facts, which sound 
worse in the telling than they actually were, the Byzantines, 
so far as an art in war is concerned, were a half dozen centu- 
ries ahead of any nation in the west. 

From the era of the Byzantine empire onward for many 
centuries it is impossible to speak with much accuracy about 
war or the art of war. History there is none ; chronicles 
mislead. Of war there was much ; of art in war there was 
little — as we understand it, none — until Gustavus Adolphus 
again infused method into what others had done with no 
method at all. Strategy had rarely shown itself since the days 
of Caesar ; tactics was whatever suited each nation or tribe, 
and never rose to the rank of grand-tactics. If a commander 
was able enough to pattern his battle-tactics to the ground 
on which he fought and to the work he had to do, he was 
deemed a marvel of originality and skill. 

All nations did not go to war mounted. It was Gothic 
infantry, not horse, which marched down the Italian penin- 
sula under Totila ; but it was the cavalry of Belisarius and of 
Narses which proved fatal to them ; and for three centuries 
the Franks kept increasing their proportion of mounted men. 
The bulk of the Teutonic forces remained foot ; and while 
Charles Martel and Charles the Great had a goodly array of 



6 



THE FEUDAL KNIGHT. 



cavalry, their armies were really infantry, supplemented to a 
moderate extent by horse. 

When the kingdom of Charles the Great was broken up 
and the local counts began to acquire a semi-independence, 
feudalism arose, and horsemen acquired still greater impor- 
tance. They had their merits. It was they who kept back 
the vast inroads of that era from north, east and south. 
Without them Christendom might have been overrun; no 
wonder the knight in armor won the regard of the whole earth. 
In England the superiority of the horseman was not dem- 
onstrated until the battle of Hastings, when William's horse, 

backed by his archers, did their 
share in overthrowing Harold's 
brave but reckless axemen ; but 
the superiority of the knight in 
armor was as marked during the 
feudal period in Britain as it was 
on the continent. 

From the establishment of feu- 
dalism until the Swiss at Morgar- 
ten and the English at Crecy 
proved the ability of good foot to 
withstand the best of cavalry, the 
horseman was preeminent. He was 
not a good soldier ; he had no idea 
of discipline ; courage, a certain ability to use his cumbrous 
weapons, and the sort of faith in his own invincibility which 
helped to render him invincible, were his only recommenda- 
tions. There was no art in what he did. His only tactics 
was to charge straight at the enemy on sight. When he 
charged on good ground, no foe could resist his impact ; but 
he might end his gallop in a marsh, or against a palisade. 
At Mansoura, St. Louis' knights were entangled in the streets 




Knight. (15th Century.) 



CUMBROUS ARMIES. 




Dismounted Knight. 
(13th Century.) 



of a town and utterly worsted. The 
knight was ignorant of art. Each army 
was formed in three great columns or 
" battles ; " these galloped upon the en- 
emy similarly marshaled, and, after a 
tussle of hours, one or the other would 
be forced back, often by an accident of 
terrain or on account of the loss of a 
leader. To set a successful ambush was 
a rarity which was applauded as a won- 
der. For many centuries armies moved 
into the enemy's territory, not to secure 
a strategic point, but to ravage the land and secure plunder 
from the harassed people. Victualing by any method was not 
attempted, and so soon as one section was eaten out, another 
must be sought, irrespective of its military value. 

Battles were rare. The rival armies did no reconnoitring, 

and thus at times scarcely 
knew each other's where- 
abouts. They met by ac- 
cident more often than by 
design, and not infre- 
quently sent word to each 
other to meet at a given 
spot and fight it out, — 
as the Cimbri had in- 
vited Marius to battle at 
Vercellse. Even then it 
exceeded their ability to 
marshal their forces on 
fair terms, for it took all 
day to deploy a small marching column into line of battle. 
A modern army manoeuvres thrice as rapidly. 




Knight. (15th Century.) 



RAIDS OR SIEGES. 




Knight in Armor. 
(13th Century.) 



The feudal knight was so utterly without discipline or reli- 
ability that mercenaries gradually crept into favor. But the 
mercenary was cast in the same mould ; he was a man in 

armor, if not a knight, and was 
equally bold and useless, though 
more loyal to his chief. So long 
as he was paid, he would stay 
with the colors, which was more 
than you could count on in the 
knight. The mercenary became 
the support of autocratic mon- 
archs ; but when, at the end of a 
war, bands of mercenaries began 
to move to and fro over the face 
of the country, seeking a new lord and fresh campaigns, they 
became of questionable utility and unquestionable danger. 

The feudal system called for castles ; castles led to a war 
of sieges rather than a war of manoeuvring and fighting. 
Many of these castles were to the armies of that day more 
serious obstacles than Ehrenbreitstein or Gibraltar to a mod- 
ern force. They began by being simple in construction ; 
they ended by being elaborate and solid. There were but 
two ways of capturing them : starvation or undermining the 
walls, and to the latter the mediaeval armies were ill adapted. 
These castles robbed war of all skill, and reduced operations 
to the scale of raids which disregarded their existence, or to 
a series of tiresome sieges. For generations after the inven- 
tion of gunpowder, artillery had small effect on these solid 
feudal structures ; less than the ancient catapults and rams. 

The Crusades were the typical work of the mailed knight ; 
and as this warrior made practically no impress on the art of 
war, so the Crusades teach us no useful lessons. Both were 
equally unpractical ; each served its purpose, but neither war 



THE CRUSADES. 9 

nor warrior was worthy of imitation, unless it be in the guile- 
less devotion of the latter. There were abundant and splen- 
did feats of arms ; there was nothing to repay study. To 
record all the deeds of valor which war has evoked is but to 
record the history of the human race ; our task is to evolve 
the history of the art of war from these deeds: in other 
words, to separate from the mere acts of courage those in- 
stances of intelligent application of courage which have added 
to our knowledge of what constitutes modern war. The thou- 
sand years during which cavalry was the sole dependence 
of Europe have in this sense few lessons for the military 
student. 




Knight. (12th Century.) 



II. 

REAPPEARANCE OF INFANTRY. 1315-1500. 

It was the plucky peasant of Switzerland and Britain who reestablished the 
value of foot. The Swiss carried an eighteen-foot pike, or a heavy halberd ; 
and in their muscular grasp these weapons were irresistible. They fought in 
an echeloned line of three solid bodies, which cavalry could not break, nor the 
infantry of the day withstand, and they were hardy marchers. At Morgarten 
(1315) they destroyed an army of knights in a mountain pass, and at Laupen 
(1389) one in the open field. Only when broken could they be beaten, as they 
later were by the Spanish sword and buckler. Equally splendid was the record 
of the English long-bow, with its cloth-yard shaft. At Cr^cy (1346) this weapon 
utterly overthrew the French chivalry ; Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415) 
proved that the day of infantry had come back. The long-bowman behind his 
stakes could not be approached by cavalry ; when broken or on the march he 
was like other foot. Swiss and Briton proved to the knight in armor that he 
was not invincible. Zisca's wagon-fort was another link in the same chain ; 
the Hussites became a terror in Germany. The disappearance of feudalism, 
the growth of intelligence, and the invention of gunpowder all contributed to 
reestablish warfare as a science. The cross-bow began to be replaced by the 
musket ; and the unwieldy knight gave way to the more active footman. As 
kings gained power and raised their own armies, war became more regular ; 
and toward 1600 conditions arose which might rehabilitate the art of war. 

It was the courage of the hardy peasantry of two western 
nations quite as much as the invention of gunpowder, which 
put a term to the ascendancy of the feudal knight, and 
reestablished infantry as the arm which should bear the brunt 
of battle. The English long-bowman with his cloth-yard 
shaft found that he could annihilate the best of cavalry from 
a distance ; the Swiss pikeman proved that armored knights 
could not ride down his steady array of protended spears. 
These facts were a revelation, and at once modified the posi- 



SWISS PIKEMAN. 



11 




Swiss Halberdier. 
(16th Century.) 



tion of the horseman in war. Each 
represented a new development of 
shock and missile tactics. The Swiss 
array was a modern revival of the old 
phalanx of Philip and Alexander; 
and, though the bow was one of the 
most ancient of weapons, it had never 
yet been what the English yeoman 
made it. 

The Swiss pike was eighteen feet 
long, with a steel head of from twelve 
to thirty-six inches, was grasped in 
both hands, and held shoulder high, 
with a downward slant. The second, 
third and fourth rank pikes protruded beyond the 
front ; the rest were held upright. This arm resem- 
bled in length and application the sarissa of Macedon, 
but it was differently held. Around the central pen- 
non of the Swiss column stood the halberdiers, who 
wielded an eight-foot heavy-headed 
weapon which could cleave the best 
of armor, lop off arms or legs, 
or even, it is said, decapitate 
a horse. Without the up- 
land brawn and tremendous 
national spirit which inspired 
the Swiss, however, even 
these weapons would have 
availed nothing. It was hardy 
strength, the love of country, 
and the instinct of liberty 
which lent them terror. 
The Swiss were rapidly 





Swiss Sergeant 
Halberdier. 



Swiss Pikeman. 
(16th Century.) 



12 



SWISS TACTICS. 




mobilized and swift on the march. Like the 

early Roman legions, they always attacked, and 

wearing no armor, could not only keep well 

ahead of the cumbrous armies of the day, but 

descend on the enemy's line with an impetus 

like the avalanches of their native 

hills. They employed light troops, 

cross-bowmen, to skirmish ahead of 

the columns, and these retired into 

the intervals when the charge was 

opened. 

The Swiss had no great generals. 
It was the courage and steadfastness, 
the weapons and skill of the men 
which won. But they had an admi- 
rable battle-field tactics. They mar- 
shaled three columns, Vorhut (van- 
guard), Gewaltshaufen (power-mass) 
and Nachhut (rear-guard), and launched them on the foe in 
echelon, with the advantage of successive impact, indepen- 
dence of movement and the safety of each column from par- 
taking of the repulse of another. At times the three columns 
were marshaled with the cen- 
tre or the wings in advance, 
a partial checker- wise forma- 
tion. The wedge and the 
hollow square, or "hedge- 
hog," showed that the Swiss 
had studied the tactical 
forms of antiquity. 

The first victory of the 
Swiss foot, at Morgarten in 1315, was not due to its superior 
formation or tactics. The feudal horsemen were lured into 



Swiss Captain. 
(16th Century.) 




Lance and Halberd Heads. 
(16th Century.) 



FOOT BEATS HORSE. 



13 




Bernese Soldiers. 
(15th Century.) 



an icy mountain-pass, with a precipice above them on the 
right, and a lake below them on the left : and here 
they were destroyed by rolling 
logs and bowlders down upon 
their line, and thus hurling 
them into the gulf beneath. 
This, coupled to a furious 
front attack with the 
deadly halberd, gave the 
knights no room to set 
their lances in rest, or 
to swing their swords. 
Morgarten was not a 
battle; it was a sur- 
prise and butchery ; 
but it opened the eyes 

of the arrogant knight to the fact that, even 
though he be afoot, a man 's a man for a' that. 
At Laupen (1339) the Swiss 
"£ infantry, quite unsustained 
| and in the open field, met, 
■? with its serried ranks and 
3 bristling pikes, an array of 
d heavy horse backed by the 
8 best infantry of the day. The 
CJ foot was quickly dispersed, 
« and all the power of the 
armored knights could not 
drive the columns from their 
ground. Infantry, after a 
dozen centuries of decay, had again proved its worth. 

Bannockburn accomplished the same end in another part 
of the world and in a different way. 




14 



FOOT AGAINST FOOT. 




It was only by similar tactics to their own — by dismounted 
heavy cavalry, or by bodies of footmen formed on the same 

method, such as the Landskneckte 
of Germany — that the Swiss met 
their match. Later on the Span- 
iards, with sword and buckler, found 
that they could annihilate the Swiss 
column, if, like the legionaries 
against the phalanx at Pydna, they 
could but once penetrate a gap. 
Foot could be matched by foot ; but 
infantry had asserted its superiority 
over horse, and in a combat be- 
tween the two arms, the pike was 
useful when sword and shield were 
of no account ; the Swiss column 
had a distinct advantage over the Spanish line. 

What placed a limit to the utility of the Swiss column was 
the revival of castrametation and the improve- 
ment of artillery. A col- 
umn with long spears was 
ill adapted to carrying 
works, nor could it live 
under well - plied salvos 
of cannon. These weak 
points, and yet more inter- 
cantonal jealousies and a 
consequent deterioration 
in discipline, eventually 
sealed the fate of the Swiss 



Genevese Mercenary. 
(15th Century.) 





English Long- 
bowman. 
(14th Century.) 



English Long- 
bowman. 
(14th Century.) 



array. 

Of even more interest 
than the Swiss footman's mastery of cavalry is the wonderful 



THE ENGLISH LONG-BOW. 



15 




Cross-bowman. 
(12th Century.) 



result obtained by the long-bow of the Englishman. Until 
the reign of John, the cross-bowman had been in the ascend- 
ant. Whatever its origin, it was Edward I. who brought the 
long-bow into favor. At Falkirk (1298) 
the long-bowmen did wonders, and while 
at Bannockburn (1314) want of support 
caused their overthrow, it was they who 
at Crecy (1346) proved to the haughty 
chivalry of France that a new era had 
arisen. With their flanks protected from 
the charges of horse and their stakes set 
up before them, the line of 
long -bowmen, vomiting its fire of three-foot 
shafts, could not be reached by the best of cav- 
alry. Poitiers (1356) was cumulative testi- 
mony, and Agincourt (1415) made it plain 
beyond cavil that infantry was regaining its 
proper place in war. 

That the French, later in this century, won 
victories against the Eng- 
lish is due to the fact 
that they had learned to 
attack the enemy only at a disadvan- 
tage, and not when the long-bowman 
could put in his best work ; they fell 
upon them on the march in lieu of 
assaulting their chosen ground. Once 
broken up, the long-bowmen were no 
more invulnerable than any other foot ; 
they were in fact at the mercy of 
cavalry charges, or of stout infan- 
try armed with good hand to hand weapons and vigorously 
led. 




Cross-bowman. 
(12th Century.) 




Cross-bowman, 
(loth Century.) 



16 



ZISCA'S WAGON-BURG. 



That the knights recognized the growing value of infantry 
is well shown in the fact that large bodies were now fre- 
quently dismounted to fight on foot, and that with their 
heavy armor and weapons they could more than once bear 
down the lighter line of unmailed infantry, — provided 
always that they had not to march far or fast. 

The Germans learned another lesson as to the efficiency 

of foot, in the Hussite wars 
of the fifteenth century. 
John Zisca was an ex- 
traordinary man. He well 
understood that his half- 
armed, undisciplined peas- 
ant rabble, with all their 
religious zeal, could not 
cope with trained troops, 
and least of all with feudal 
cavalry. But he stood at 
bay, and with his wagon- 
fortress scheme developed into a science of defensive tac- 
tics, he, too, helped teach the heavy-armed rider that the 
footman, well used, was more than his equal. This wagon- 
camp tactics grew to be so exact that Zisca's armies changed 
from the defensive to the offensive, and moved to and fro 
over the land with more swiftness than their opponents ; 
and woe betide the heavy horse which dared to charge 
in on the wagon-burg. The Hussites, in open field, would 
march into the very teeth of a German army. They were 
marshaled in five columns, the artillery and cavalry in the 
centre ; outside this two short wagon-columns, and then 
again two long ones. As by magic, the short wagon-columns 
would gallop up to form a front line and back to form a 
rear one ; the whole structure was lashed together with 




Cross-bowmen. (15th Century.) 



EXIT OF FEUDAL KNIGHT. 17 

chains or ropes ; on each wagon mounted its special squad 
of defenders, and lo, in the twinkling of an eye, almost a 
Roman camp in the midst of the enemy's battalions. And 
from out this camp would sally men with flails and pikes, 
whose fanatical fury was irresistible. So dreaded were they 
that a handful of Hussites would sometimes disperse an army. 
Nothing but artillery could successfully demolish these wagon- 
burgs, and Zisca had always a superior equipment of guns to 
silence the enemy's. German armies could finally not be got 
to face the Hussites. This tactics was not within the domain 
of regular warfare ; but it was an instance of able adaptation 
of means to end, and a further proof of the value of the foot- 
man properly put to use. Internal dissensions among Bohe- 
mians finally broke up this remarkable method of defensive 
tactics. But while it existed, it worked towards the same 
end of destroying the ascendancy of horse. 

So long as the feudal power remained in force, there was 
small chance of a revival of the art of war. But princes, dis- 
satisfied with the untrustworthiness of the forces raised under 
the feudal system, resorted to mercenaries, either in time of 
war, or to protect their real or pretended rights against their 
own vassals. Feudalism outgrew its usefulness. It accom- 
plished its mission and gave way to something better, taking 
with it that warrior who from one point of view is the preux 
chevalier of all the ages, and from another the typical armed 
bully, — the mailed knight. 

References to explosive substances like gunpowder, or to 
burning substances like Greek fire, are to be found in works 
literally as old as Moses. Among later references, some of 
the Brahmins of Alexander's time are said by Philostratus to 
have been able to " overthrow their enemies with tempests 
and thunderbolts shot from their walls ; " Archimedes, at 
Syracuse, is said by Plutarch to have " cast huge stones from 



18 



GUNPOWDER. 




Hand Gun. 




his machines with a great noise ; " Ca- 
ligula is stated by Dion Cassius to have 
had machines which " imitated thunder 
and lightning and emitted stones ; " 
and Marcus Graccus in the eighth cen- 
tury gives a receipt of one pound of sulphur, two of willow 
charcoal and six of saltpetre, for the discharge of what we 
should call a rocket. 

The use of Greek fire was understood as early as the sixth 
century, but powder was earliest used in China, perhaps a 
thousand years before Christ, 
and was introduced to Euro- 
pean notice by the Saracens. 
Neither Schwartz nor Bacon 
can be said to be its inventor. 
Early in the fourteenth cen- 
tury cannon and gunpowder 
appear to have been known in Florence ; in 1338 mention is 
made of them among the stores in the Tower of London and 
the arsenal at Rouen ; and in 1346 guns — perhaps hand 
guns — are said to have been used at Cre*cy. 

It is certain that the Spanish Moors, shortly after 1326, 

had made the use 
of gunpowder, fire- 
arms and cannon 
well known in west- 
ern Europe, and by 
the end of the cen- 
tury they were the 
common property of 
all armies. At first 
their high cost pre- 

Big Cannon. (15th Century.) eluded their use ex- 



Bombard of Rhodes. Calibre, 22 in. 
Threw Stone Ball of 650 pounds. 




EARLY ARTILLERY. 



19 




Bombardelle. (15th Century.) 



cept in sieges and the defense of towns ; it was much later, 
at the battle of Kosabeck, in 1382, between the Dutch and 
French, that field-ar- 
tillery appeared. 

At the end of the 
fourteenth century- 
guns were cast of 
bronze, copper and 
iron, and called bombardce. Some of these were huge speci- 
mens, which consumed large charges of powder, and hurled 
stone balls of from one hundred to one thousand pounds 
weight. Mortars appeared in Italy about the middle of the 

fifteenth century. 

The French first made 
use of field - artillery, 
which could be trans- 
ported in the army train. 
That which accompanied 




French Gun. (loth Century.) 



Charles VIII. to Italy in 1494 was, comparatively speaking, 
light, rapid of fire and well served. Other nations gradually 
fell into line, and Gustavus made artillery of really light calibre. 
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centu- 
ries part of the 
infantry bore fire- 
arms. These were 
at first extreme- 
ly crude, being 
merely a gun-bar- 
rel lashed to a 
stick and set off 
by a match ; but by the end of the sixteenth century they 
had all grown to have a lock, and the form of the weapon 
began to approach the musket. 





Hand Bombardelle. 
(15th Century.) 



Mounted Culveri- 
neer. 



20 



THE CROSS-BOW DISAPPEARS. 




Cross-bow. 
(15th Century.) 



In the second half of the fifteenth century firearms and 
artillery had become a necessary part of the equipment of 
an army. The feudal organization was disappearing, and 

the power of kings received 
more recognition. Both these 
things combined to make possi- 
ble a revival in the art of war. 
Standing armies had become 
the rule, and war was no longer 
the exclusive prerogative of 
the nobleman. As infantry re- 
sumed its sway and cavalry was 
set back to its proper function ; as artillery improved and 
discipline was enforced, those conditions gradually obtained 
on which Gustavus Adolphus exercised so marked an influ- 
ence. Since the Byzantine art disappeared, there had been 
no basis on which to build such a thing as a science of war ; 
but a proper 
basis was now 
formed. 

By the mid- 
dle of the six- 
teenth century 
the cross-bow 
disappeared, 
and infantry 

was armed with pikes, halberds and muskets. At first the 
musketeers were but ten or fifteen to a large company ; but 
the number increased until, early in the seventeenth century, 
two thirds of the men were armed with muskets. They all 
wore light helmets and breastplates. 

The Dutch, in their wars against Spain, made marked tac- 
tical progress. Particularly, Maurice of Nassau improved 




Cross-bow. (15th Century.) 



MAURICE OF NASSAU. 



21 



the musket and lock, made rules for the footmen, introduced 
the cadenced step, and prescribed many evolutions, ployments 
and deployments. Other able soldiers were working in the 
same direction. 




Hand Culverin. (1480.) 




Arquebusier. (1507.) 



III. 

CHANGES IN TACTICS. — SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

Heavy horse had fought in column ; then in one long line ; later the column 
was resumed. The foot was ployed into big battalia or " battles," huge squares 
of pikemen thirty or forty deep, with cross-bowmen or musketeers on the corners 
or sides. As artillery and firearms improved, the depth was reduced. These 
battles stood in line or checker-wise, and skirmishers operated in front of and 
between them. Up to the fifteenth century the horse stood in front of the line 
of battle ; later it was mixed with it, and a reserve was kept. From the six- 
teenth century the cavalry was put on or behind the flanks. Artillery was 
too heavy to follow troops ; it delayed their marches, and always fell to the 
victor. Parallel order was invariable ; the lines were cumbrous, and battles 
were bloody because the troops once in could not be got out of action. Pursuit 
was unknown. Marches were in close column, with van and flankers, but at no 
great distance. The train was enormous. Food was got by plunder. The use 
of mercenary troops introduced rank and command ; those who raised the men 
became the officers. There was no discipline. Punishments were Draconic ; 
rewards brilliant. Up to about 1500 prisoners had been killed ; the system of 
ransom then sprang up, to the sad increase of the train. Earthworks around 
camps grew into use. In besieging fortresses treachery was resorted to, and 
the ancient siege devices were used until the introduction of artillery. The art 
of besieging remained crude until the sixteenth century, when the Italians, and 
later the Dutch, improved it, and engineering began to take on a better form. 

Prior to the sixteenth century it had been a habit to draw 
up heavy cavalry in one long line (en haye). The rule then 
grew up of marshaling all cavalry in solid columns, which 
opened in order to use their firearms. The foot was likewise 
marshaled in heavy squares, called battalia or "battles." 
The cross-bowmen, later the musketeers, formed the front and 
rear ranks of these battles, and a file on each flank. The 
rest of them were posted on the four corners in bodies, of 



"BATTLES." 23 

which, when the front rank had fired, it retired behind the 
rest to load. The depth of these battles long remained thirty 
to forty men ; but as artillery became more dangerous, early 
in the seventeenth century, it was reduced to ten and eight 
men, and even to five. As a general rule, the pikemen and 
halberdiers fought in close, the cross-bowmen and musketeers 
in open, ranks ; in other words, the long-range and hand to 
hand fighters kept to their appropriate formations. The fight 
was opened by volunteers, or men chosen by lot (enfants 
perdus, forlorn hopes), who skirmished out in front, and 
though they rallied in groups in case they were attacked by 
cavalry, they were often ridden down. 

In line of battle, the cavalry, up to the fifteenth century, 
was wont to be in front, the foot in the rear. Later, the 
columns of foot were for mutual support mixed with those of 
horse in the same line, as the fire of the cross-bowmen would, 
it was thought, make the work of the horse more easy ; and a 
reserve of heavy horse and foot was kept in the rear. From 
the sixteenth century on, the foot stood habitually in the 
centre, the cavalry on the flanks, or behind the flanks. There 
was no set battle-order. The battles were placed in one con- 
tinuous line, or checker-wise, or at times in concave order. 
Open ground was sought and, if possible, with the sun and 
wind in the rear. 

The artillery was placed in batteries at any commanding 
part of the line, and the horses or oxen which dragged it were 
sent to the rear. It could neither follow the troops in a vic- 
tory nor sustain an advance, and in case of disaster was sure 
to fall into the enemy's hands. Despite these demerits, artil- 
lery grew in importance : its advantages outweighed its short- 
comings. 

The introduction of firearms brought about many changes. 
Open order became essential, and cavalry looked on its fire 



24 RANK AND COMMAND. 

as superior to the co]d weapon. The horsemen awaited a 
charge and received it with salvos of musketry, while during 
a charge the men stopped to fire a volley, or often several ; 
though, if without firearms, they still charged as of old. The 
dragoons dismounted and fought on foot. The infantry 
fought in open or closed order, according as it bore missile or 
close-quarter weapons. 

The rival lines were slowly formed behind a cloud of skir- 
mishers. Duels between champions or small bodies were fre- 
quent. Parallel order was almost invariable ; flank attacks 
or turning movements were rare or accidental. In the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries battles were often sanguinary, 
and ended in the annihilation of one army. Firearms reduced 
the casualties because battles were sooner decided. Pursuit 
was almost never undertaken. It was in fact a traditional 
habit to remain three days on the field of victory, to celebrate 
the event and to divide the booty. 

Marches were conducted in as heavy columns as the roads 
allowed ; the cavalry and foot were mixed ; the artillery, 
strongly escorted, was in a separate column. Yan- and rear- 
guard and flankers were put out, but at no great distance. 
The baggage-train grew enormously in size ; non-combatants 
and women accompanied the army in almost incredible num- 
bers, and the soldiers were followed by their prisoners and 
booty, in whatever fashion they could be transported. Com- 
pared to the orderliness of an army of to-day, the army of 
three hundred years ago was worse than a mob. 

During the feudal era, rank and command, as we under- 
stand it, did not exist; but the employment of mercenary 
troops gradually evolved a system. The monarch appointed 
the army commanders and the colonels ; the latter selected as 
captains the men who raised the companies ; the captains 
chose their lieutenants : and the men were often permitted to 



RANSOMS. 25 

select the petty (or non-commissioned) officers. This ancient 
device was substantially the system which prevailed in raising 
volunteer regiments during our civil war. 

On recruitment the men were expected to report with a 
given number of days' rations, after which the prince they 
served was supposed to keep them in victual ; but this was 
so ill done that plunder was the universal means of subsist- 
ence. There were no magazines until much later ; regular 
requisitions on the enemy's territory were unknown, food was 
usually brought from the army's base, and this was a long and 
tedious process, whose irregularity forbade rapid manoeuvres, 
and gave rise to hunger and sickness, to desertions and 
plunder. Nor until long after regular armies had become the 
rule was there any method in feeding troops, and their pay- 
ment was even more shiftlessly conducted than the rationing. 

Even so late as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the 
feudal organizations showed no discipline whatever ; but the 
growth of mercenary organizations made severer methods 
imperative. In the sixteenth, Ferdinand the Catholic in Spain, 
Francis I. and Henry II. in France, and Charles V. in Ger- 
many made codes of laws for their respective armies. Under 
these codes the punishments were Draconic, and rewards 
were allotted for courage and exemplary service ; but unless 
a general was able and much beloved by his men, no laws 
could keep up a discipline such as to-day we take for granted. 

Prisoners in feudal times had been habitually treated with 
such cruelty that few escaped with their lives. Only the 
nobles could buy release. But little by little a system of ran- 
som sprang up under which even the common soldier could 
hope for freedom. This was a step in the right direction, 
but it increased the train to a dangerous degree, and ham- 
pered still further the movements of troops. 

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries armies camped 



26 SIEGES. 

without much artificial protection, though the wagons were 
used as defenses ; but firearms soon made it essential for 
camps to be surrounded by earthworks, on which guns were 
mounted. The profiles of these works gradually became more 
marked, and bastions and outworks were erected. Especially 
the artillery parks were fortified lest the guns should be 
captured. 

In attacking fortresses, the ancient means of rams, movable 
towers, catapults and ballistas, Greek fire and like devices 
remained in use until the introduction of gunpowder. Walls 
of circumvallation and contravallation were thrown up, and 
mining was commonly resorted to. In the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries great advance was made in the con- 
duct of sieges, especially by the Italians. These new methods, 
improved on in the Netherlands, led up to the modern art 
of engineering. Treacherous dealings were first essayed 
with the commandant of a strong place, or with a friendly 
party within walls. Secret escalade might be attempted. 
If neither was available, a regular siege was undertaken. 
Trenches were dug, at first without system, later in zigzags. 
Batteries were erected to command the enemy's walls, and 
breaches were operated. Powder was too costly to use in 
mining ; walls were undermined by heat, as in antiquity. 
The besieged kept up a heavy fire, threw burning substances 
at night to light up the siege-lines, built outworks from which 
to disturb the operations, made sorties, and defended them- 
selves from assaults with stubbornness. To a storm-captured 
fortress no quarter was given, and the defenders fought with 
this knowledge. 

The wars in the Netherlands in the last half of the six- 
teenth century gave a great impetus to engineering. Out- 
works grew in extent and importance, and inner works were 
built to enable the besieged to hold the fortress even after 



DAWN OF NEW ERA. 27 

the loss of the walls. Regular sieges were long drawn out. 
Trenches were opened beyond cannon-shot ; covered trenches 
or saps nearer to ; and breastworks at given distances took 
the place of parallels. All but the breaching batteries were 
placed so as to command the tops of the walls. Many of our 
common devices, such as mantelets, fascines, sand-bags, had 
their modern origin in these days. Breaches were carried by 
storming parties made up of volunteers. The besieged grad- 
ually learned in a cruder way all the arts of defense which 
are now put into use. 

The role played by the invention of gunpowder has been 
exaggerated ; it was an effect, not a cause ; gunpowder was 
but one manifestation of the growth of the world out of the 
darkness of the Middle Ages ; the advance in military art 
was another. It was in reality the dawn of the new era of 
intelligence, the emergence from the ignorance which had 
engulfed Europe for a thousand years, which lay at the root 
of all these improvements. It was time mankind should 
redeem itself. 




Officer. (14th Century.) 



IV. 

THE SWEDISH AKMY-CHANGES. 1523-1632. 

From Alexander to Csesar, the art of war rose to a great height ; from Csesar 
to Gustavus, it sank into oblivion ; Gustavus re-created it. Gunpowder gave a 
new direction to war. Ancient arms were simple ; armies needed no magazines, 
nor trains to carry munitions, and everything tended to battle. When firearms 
and cannon were introduced, the strong places where the munitions lay became 
so important as to be fortified, and armies sought rather to capture these than 
to fight battles. Hence a system of sieges. Armies could not go far from their 
munitions ; artillery was heavy ; marches were slow and tedious ; victories 
could not be made decisive by pursuit ; and all war was formal. Troops were 
raised by recruitment or press-gangs, and their quality was bad. Sweden first 
created a national militia, and its regular army, drawn therefrom, had no mer- 
cenaries. In France there were then but fifteen thousand men as a standing 
army. Marked tactical advance was soon made, and troops grew more mobile. 
Infantry was the bulk of the force ; pikemen gradually gave way to musketeers, 
especially for light troops. The file was still deep ; but Gustavus reduced it to 
six, which deployed to three deep to fire. The men wore light armor and a pot 
helmet. The pike was shortened. The musket, after many stages, grew light 
enough to dispense with the crutch-rest ; paper cartridges were introduced ; 
and finally the bayonet was added. The foot got organized into companies and 
regiments, and rank and command were settled. Fire grew more rapid, especially 
among the Swedes, but minor tactics was crude. Cavalry consisted of cuiras- 
siers and dragoons ; light horse existed in eastern Europe only ; all was organ- 
ized into cornets and regiments. Cavalry had grown to rely on its firearms ; 
Gustavus taught it to cbarge at a gallop. The Swedish artillery was far ahead 
of any other. Gustavus made light and handy guns, which could keep up with 
the troops and fire with rapidity ; and he invented fixed ammunition. At one 
time the king used leather guns. The artillery was reduced to a system of 
regular calibres, and the handling of guns became a science. 

It is desirable to review part of what lias been said in 
former volumes, in order to lead up to the military status of 
Sweden, when Gustavus Adolphus was on the throne. His- 



ANCIENT ARMIES. 29 

tory shows us three main periods in the art of war : the first 
from remote antiquity to the decadence of Rome ; the second, 
during the Middle Ages, and down to Gustavus ; the third, 
from the beginning of Gustavus' work to the present day. 
During the first period, the art of war under the Greeks and 
Romans, and notably under Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar, 
attained a height such that, in view of the uncertainty in war- 
fare and of the changeableness of tactics arising from the 
rapidity of modern invention, it may be said to dispute the 
palm with that of the nineteenth century. During the second 
period, the art of war sank to its lowest level, as letters and 
arts were forgotten, and began slowly to rise, as people again 
became intelligent ; and to this rise the introduction of gun- 
powder contributed. From the genius of Gustavus in the 
third period, the art of war acquired a notable impetus and a 
life which, invigorated by the great deeds of Frederick and 
Napoleon, has brought it to the present high development. 

It was the introduction of gunpowder into Europe which 
gave the key-note to the new science of war, so different from 
that which obtained among the ancients. The two periods 
in which war has really flourished, and which have been not 
over three hundred years in length, were separated by a gap 
of many centuries. The distinction between the two was a 
marked one. 

The armies of the Greeks and Romans were, as a rule, not 
numerically large. Their method of victualing troops was 
such that food could be found almost everywhere, and it was 
not usually necessary to establish storehouses of provisions or 
to bring rations from a great distance. The weapons of the 
ancients were simple, and those which did not last long — 
spears, darts and arrows — could be readily manufactured in 
any place, and by the soldiers themselves. Great arsenals of 
military stores were unessential to an army in the field ; nor 



30 ANCIENTS NEEDED ONLY TACTICS. 

had powder and ball, or other ammunition, to be brought up 
from the rear to supply the waste of battle. For this reason 
the ancients had no need of fortresses, or depots in their rear. 
Communication with home was of less importance than after 
the introduction of gunpowder with all its machinery, and the 
reasons which make the security of a base so essential in 
modern times were to the ancients of no moment whatever. 

With the ancients battle was the one important feature. 
The nature of their weapons brought them at once into close 
quarters, and kept them there. To withdraw an army from 
battle with a moderate loss if things went wrong was impos- 
sible, — to all but the very few great generals. There was 
no artillery to keep the enemy at a distance and arrest his 
pursuit while the beaten troops were retired out of action ; 
and the rival lines were too much intermingled to make this 
possible if there had been. Battles commonly resulted in 
victory for. one side and fearful massacre for the other. 

The average generals of antiquity needed no art except 
the art of fighting battles, — in other words, tactics. To them 
what we call strategy was an unessential art. They marched 
their armies out to a convenient plain in which to fight, and 
everything depended on the victory they there might win. 
The great captains of antiquity were undeniably able strate- 
gists as well as fine tacticians ; but strategy is the very essence 
of intellectual common sense, and their clear vision enabled 
them to see the advantage of doing that which we have now 
reduced to rules and called a science, — which indeed is but 
a collection of those things which the great captains have 
taught us how to do. 

In modern times, when the introduction of firearms, for 
infantry and cavalry alike, became universal; when much 
artillery accompanied armies ; when their numerical force 
became larger, and they had to be fed and supplied with 



INDECISIVE VICTORIES. 31 

ammunition from magazines in their rear, the importance of 
these depots became so great that they were invariably turned 
into fortresses ; and their value lent an equal importance to 
the lines of communication out to the army depending upon 
them. These lines had to be protected at all hazards, for 
their interruption for even a few days might bring disaster to 
the army thus cut off. 

Again, the transportation of rations and material of war 
required long trains, and consumed much time. The loss of 
a convoy or of a fortress was as harmful as the loss of a bat- 
tle. Thus in a certain sense battles forfeited their original 
importance, and people took instead to manoeuvring on the 
enemy's communications or to capturing his fortresses. 

Victories, to be decisive, must as a rule be followed by vig- 
orous pursuit ; and the armies of the early period of gunpow- 
der, loaded down, depending on depots, and followed by a 
horde of non-combatants, often exceeding in number the 
arms-bearing men, were cumbrous and unsuited to pursuit. 
A further reason why battles were followed by so little gain 
was that they were delivered only to defeat, destroy or inflict 
loss on the enemy — from purely tactical reasons — without 
any ulterior purpose. The art of making battle subserve a 
larger purpose in the general campaign-scheme, so that a vic- 
tory shall be of due effect, was not then understood. It is, in 
modern times, of recent origin. Thus, though there was an 
effort to make war a science, to reduce it to rides, the lack of 
broader knowledge and the cumbrous method of the day ren- 
dered the average campaigns, even up to the end of the sev- 
enteenth century, slow, long drawn-out and indecisive ; f ull of 
wrong, ill-digested methods, of a curious sort of formality or 
subservience to certain hard and fast rules. 

Sweden was the first country in Europe which built up 
for herself a regular and at the same time national military 



32 



MERCENARY SOLDIERS. 



organization. In other countries what army there existed was 
small, — had originally served as a species of guard of honor 
to the king. In case of war, troops were raised by conscrip- 
tion, or under a rude militia system, by voluntary or press- 
gang enlistments, or by the purchase of mercenaries. In the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the soldier of fortune 

was a typical character, equally use- 
ful and unreliable in war, and dan- 
gerous in war and peace alike. These 
men earned their livelihood by arms 
as a trade, not as a profession ; they 
expected to live on their pay and ra- 
tions, and they hoped to grow rich 
by plunder. The free towns were 
garrisoned by their citizens, who 
were enrolled in a regular body for 
the defense and policing of their 
city ; in case they needed additional 
forces they resorted to mercenaries. 

Sweden was a noteworthy excep- 
tion. As early as the sixteenth 
century the Vasa kings laid the foundation of a national 
regular army, and Gustavus Adolphus perfected it. The 
Swedish army was a pattern organization, in which there 
were no mercenaries. It consisted of a given number of 
regular troops, raised, paid, fed and equipped by the state, 
and back of these stood a militia kept up by the people. 
The regulars were intended for wars outside the national ter- 
ritory, the militia for the defense of the fatherland ; and the 
regulars were kept at full strength by drafts from the militia. 
The raising of the troops was based on a careful system of 
land-tenure, under which all able-bodied males from fifteen 
years up were called into service ; and Gustavus introduced 




Danzig Citizen Soldier (tak- 
ing oath). 
From an old print. 



SWEDISH ARMY SYSTEM. 



33 




Lansquenet. 
(16th Century.) 



a novel method under which each soldier was supposed to 
own and to be supported and equipped by a certain parcel of 
land, rising in size and importance accord- 
ing to arm and grade. 

The militia consisted of eight cavalry and 
twenty infantry regiments, each raised in 
whole or in part in a given district from its 
own inhabitants, and kept on foot at the 
expense of that district. The men there 
liable to duty assembled at a given time 
under its standard, and each district raised 
from three hundred to six hundred men. 
King Eric strove to make the conscripts 
from each set of twelve districts into a 
regiment, but these proved too irregular in size. The early 
number of three thousand to a regiment was finally reduced 
to eleven hundred and seventy-six ; and Gustavus equalized 
companies and regiments. The militia 
was carefully drilled, kept at its full com- 
plement by annual drafts, and relieved 
from taxes and some other burdens. As 
Sweden was poorly populated, and the 
militia contributed to the regular contin- 
gent no more than twelve or fifteen thou- 
sand men a year, Gustavus was eventu- 
ally compelled to resort to mercenaries 
to fill his war-thinned ranks; and regi- 
ments came to his army from all parts of 
Germany, the Netherlands and England. 
But the Swedes were the leaven of the 
lump. 

The other nations of Europe boasted no such settled organ- 
ization. All middle Europe was split up into petty princi- 




Musketeer. 
(1572.) 



34 



INTELLIGENT ORGANIZERS. 



palities, of a size which precluded armies worthy 
the name. Of the Catholic German troops, Wal- 
lenstein's were perhaps the best ; Tilly's ranked 
next. Of the Protestant German troops, the 
Saxons were deemed to hold the palm, though 
they did not prove it at Breitenf eld ; then the 
Hessians, and the army of Brunswick-Liineburg, 
the latter being patterned on the Swedish. Den- 
mark had practically no army system. France, 
at the time, had only fifteen thousand men as a 
standing army, with cadres that could be in- 
creased to fifty thousand in case of need, of 
which ten thousand would be mounted. This 
was a mere fraction of what she called out 
under the Grand Monarque. 

Though there had been little advance in gen- 
eral military organization, the tac- 
tical systems of the various coun- 
tries had improved. William and 
Maurice of Orange, Spinola, 
Henry IV. and Coligny each contributed some- 
thing to the discipline and structure of troops ; 
and Gustavus put on the capstone in the Swed- 
ish army changes. The wars in the Nether- 
lands and Germany in the sixteenth and sev- 
enteenth centuries had shown up the defects 
which had come down from feudal times, and 
the bright intellects among rulers and their 
servants set themselves the task of supplying 
the remedy. But to create a system which 
should permanently affect the art of war re- 
mained for Gustavus Adolphus. 

Infantry, in the early part of the seventeenth 



Pikeman. 
(1534.) 



PIKE AND MUSKET. 



35 




century, consisted of pikemen and musketeers, and with the 
efficiency of firearms the latter increased from one third to 
two thirds of the force. In Swedish companies of one hun- 
dred and fifty men, there were sev- 
enty-five musketeers and fifty-nine 
pikemen, the rest being petty and 
commissioned officers. The mus- 
keteers were reckoned as light 
troops, best fitted for scouting and 
outpost service ; they had a pot 
helmet, a sabre and 
a musket. The pike- 
men were the heavy 
armed, and were 
deemed superior in 
value, — what we 
should call the troops 
of the line. They 

had full body-armor, and until the seventeenth 
century thigh-pieces. Their eighteen-foot pikes 
were finally replaced by partisans, with eleven- 
foot shaft, and two-foot double-edged head, 
four inches in width. Later, the length of the 
partisan and shaft appears to have been cut 
down to not over eight feet. Gustavus fore- 
saw that musketry was the arm of the future, 
and gradually decreased the number of pike- 
°T e ! 0i nf,T? h men as well as took from the weight of their 

a oot. (lo47.) ° 

armor to add to their mobility. In 1631 he 
introduced entire regiments of musketeers. The distinction 
between riflemen who fired guns and grenadiers who threw 
hand grenades dates back to him. The word " grenadier " 
was coined at the defense of Ratisbon by the Swedes in 1632, 



Grenadier. (1696.) 



trd 



36 



FORKED REST. 




Arquebus and Rest. 
(16th Century.) 



when those soldiers who took the risk of handling and casting 
hand grenades from the walls were given extra pay ; for the 
riflemen could fire from behind cover as they could not. The 
officers of infantry carried a partisan and a sword. Bow- 
men did not exist in Germany. 
In 1623 Gustavus organized 
the Swedish companies of one 
hundred and fifty men, set up 
in files six deep. Four com- 
panies made a " squadron " or 
battalion ; eight companies a 
regiment ; three regiments a 
" great regiment " or brigade. 
Some regiments enlisted in for- 
eign parts had but one hun- 
dred and twenty men to the company. The companies and 
battalions stood in line with varying intervals between them. 

The arming of the infantry underwent a considerable 
change. There appears to have been a number of " double- 
pay " men (veterans) as far back as Eric's time. They car- 
ried the pike and wore armor, and numbered at times nearly 
three fourths of the force. The 
old arquebus and cross-bow, 
heavy and clumsy, with their 
forked rest, were replaced by 
the musket ; but this still 
needed a rest. It was provid- 
ed with a match-lock, a device 
originally more reliable than 
the flint-lock, which often 
missed fire ; but gradually the 
latter was improved, and drove 
out the match. About 1626 Musketeer. (1630.) 




SUCCESSIVE GUNLOCKS. 



37 




Matchlock. (Stockholm Museum.) 



Gustavus lightened the musket sufficiently to dispense with 
the crutch, and introduced the wheel-lock ; and in his wars 
against the Poles, not 
above taking a hint 
from any source, he 
resorted to the old 
Roman, or, one might 
say, the English long- 
bowman's habit of 

having the men carry sharpened palisades, not for camping, 
but to erect a defense against the Polish lancers from 
behind which they could fire upon them. This was a spe- 
cies of survival of 
the musket - rest ; 
it finally became 
only an iron-point- 
ed rod ; and to it 
some have as- 
cribed the origin 
of the bayonet. It was carried after a while in the train, 
as it loaded down the men and militated against rapidity. 

The next important improvement in firearms, and this was 
first made in the 
Swedish army, was 
the introduction of 
paper cartridges. Of 
these the men car- 
ried ten, together 
with spare powder 
and ball, in car- 
tridge-boxes or " bandoliers " slung across the chest from 
left shoulder to right side ; while a sword hung in a belt 
from right shoulder to left side. The bayonet and flint-lock 




Wheel-lock. (Stockholm Museum.) 




J3^ 

Pistol Flint-lock. 



(1613. Stockholm Museum.) 



38 



ORGANIZATION OF FOOT. 



were introduced in France some time after Gustavus' death ; 
and the troops armed with this handy musket {facile — fusil ; 
though the name probably came from focus — fire, Italian 
focile) were called fusiliers. The bayonet was mounted on 
a wooden plug to be inserted in the bore of the musket. It 
first made its appearance in the wars in the Netherlands. 

Infantry, in all the European countries, finally got divided 
into regiments and companies ; but these were of no especial 
numerical strength. The company occasionally ran up as 
high as three hundred men, and the 
regiment to over four thousand. Gus- 
tavus' regular regiments were more uni- 
form. The companies had one hundred 
and fifty men, and eight to twelve com- 
panies made a regiment. In 1630 eight 
companies were deemed a battalion or 
regiment. It goes without saying that 
the exigencies of active service often 
changed all this. A note by Oxenstiern 
exists which speaks of foot regiments varying between fifteen 
hundred and nineteen hundred men ; cavalry regiments with 
from four to eight companies ; and they must have varied 
much more. To one who has served with regiments which 
from one thousand men would run down, in the course of a 
campaign, to two hundred or less, this seems a very small vari- 
ation ; but Swedish recruits were used to equalize old regi- 
ments, not to make new ones. The Swedish militia regiment 
varied according to the population of the district in which it 
was raised. In the bulk of the countries of Germany about 
two thousand men made up an infantry regiment, and its 
officers were a colonel, lieutenant-colonel, major, quartermas- 
ter and regimental clerk ; a barber and one assistant, who 
were surgeon and apothecary ; a provost-marshal and one as- 




Early Bayonets. 



MORE RAPID FIRE. 



39 



sistant ; a chaplain and one assistant ; a judge advocate and 
his clerk. The infantry company had a captain, a lieutenant, 
an ensign, two sergeants, one muster-clerk, a quartermaster, an 
armorer, six corporals, two drummers and a fifer. In active 
service there were ninety to ninety-four common soldiers, 
fifteen upper and twenty-one lower file-leaders and four 
muster-boys. 

Loading and firing, with the constant 
improvement in firearms, grew more rapid ; 
and yet it took ninety-five to ninety-nine 
" motions " to complete the operation, 
though Gustavus had abolished a large 
number of useless ones. On the other 
hand, the minor tactics of the foot-soldier 
was very crude, and was confined to the 
simple facings, wheel- 
ings, ployments and de- 
ployments. The solid 
masses or phalanxes of 
the Spanish style re- 
mained in use by all 
but the Swedes, while Gustavus set up his 
men six deep, the pikemen in the centre, 
the musketeers on the flanks or in small 
intermingled bodies, and later three deep. 
The cavalry consisted of cuirassiers and 
dragoons, the latter being mounted in- 
fantry. There had been mounted arque- 
busiers, but Gustavus gave these weapons 
up in favor of lighter firearms in all cavalry regiments. 

In the imperial armies were heavy cavalry, carbineers and 
Croats or Hungarian irregulars. These three species of horse 
were known by different names in different countries, and 





English Soldier 
(unequipped). 



German Officer. (1630 



40 



TYPES OF CAVALRY. 




(1616.) 



varied in them all. "When Gustavus 
came to the throne, the cavalry was 
still considered the more honorable 
arm; but the nobility, which grew 
poorer as the commonalty gained in 
intelligence, were unable voluntarily 
to keep this arm up to its ancient 
standard, and Gustavus was finally 
compelled to recruit his cavalry in 
the same manner as his foot. It 
was not strong ; in Sweden were only 
some thirty -five hundred mounted 
troops. As the firearm gained in 
efficiency, horse-armor was discarded ; the lauce gave way to 
the more useful carbine, and the dragoons, introduced into the 
Swedish army from Germany in 1611, were furnished with an 
infantry musket and dismounted to fight. They were really 
bodies of infantry, comprising both musketeers and pikemen, 
and mounted to enable them to 
move fast. They lacked the 
cavalryman's distinctive boots 
and spurs. Yet they were not 
bad cavalry ; their record as 
such was good. The cuirassier 
retained helmet, cuirass of front 
and back pieces, sword and two 
pistols ; but from this time on 
light cavalry has constantly 
gained in relative efficiency over 
the heavy. 

Like foot, the horse was organized into regiments and com- 
panies, the latter also called " squadrons " or " cornets." The 
Swedish cavalry regiments had a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel 




Hungarian Irregular. 
(17th Century.) 



REGIMENTAL OFFICERS. 



41 




and major, a quartermaster, regimental clerk and a barber- 
surgeon. The cavalry cornet, or company, bad a captain with 
four horses, a lieutenant and an ensign with three horses 
each, two corporals with two horses each, a quartermaster 
with two horses, a muster-clerk, a chaplain, a provost, a 
barber, a farrier, each with one horse, two trumpeters and one 
hundred and two common soldiers ; or, all told, one hundred 
and fifteen men with one hun- 
dred and twenty-five horses. 
The strength of the cavalry reg- 
iments of other countries was 
very various, and the difficulty 
of procuring horses often dis- 
mounted great numbers of men. 
The imperial companies aver- 
aged one hundred horses, the 
regiments eight hundred. The 
Swedish regiments of cavalry 
had eight cornets, aggregating one thousand horses. 

The main trouble with the horse prior to Gustavus' day 
was its slowness in charging. It would ride up to the enemy, 
when each rank would successively fire and then wheel off 
to reload. The light horsemen served as scouts ; the heavy 
cavalry lacked elan, never undertaking the true role of horse. 
The Swedish cuirassiers, on the contrary, were taught to ride 
at a gallop, to fire their pistols at speed, and then take to the 
naked weapon. If they were superior to the German cavalry 
in any one point, it was in their better tactics, and this was 
Gustavus' doing. On the whole, the Swedish cavalry, barring 
discipline, was no better than the German ; perhaps the heavy 
cavalry was not as good as the best German squadrons, on 
account of the smaller size of the Swedish horses, nor the 
light as good as the Croat irregulars. 



Croat. 



42 



SWEDISH ARTILLERY. 



But there was no question as to the superiority of Swedish 
artillery. Gustavus Adolphus introduced marked changes in 
this arm, mainly by making the guns and carriages lighter 
and handier, and by adapting their movements to those of the 
other arms and to the requirements of the battle-field. In 
this, as in all his military efforts, his motto was mobility and 
rapidity of fire. 

There were, according to size, three kinds of guns : siege, 
ship, field. The twenty-four-pounder siege-gun weighed three 
tons ; the twenty-four-pounder field-gun only twenty-seven 
hundred pounds. The twelve-pounder siege-gun weighed a 
ton and a half, the twelve-pounder field-gun only eighteen 
hundred pounds. The six-pounder siege-gun weighed three 




Siege-Guns. 
a, Twenty-four pounder ; calibre, 5 inches ; weight, 6,000 pounds. (Stockholm 
Artillery Museum.) 6, Twelve-pounder ; calibre, 4 inches ; weight, 2,600 
pounds. (Stockholm Artillery Museum.) c, Six-pounder ; calibre, 3.3 inches ; 
weight, 1,700 pounds. (Stockholm Artillery Museum.) 

fourths of a ton ; the six-pounder field-gun twelve hundred 
pounds. There were also three-pounders and two-pounders for 
field use. The ship-guns were intermediate in heft. There 
was some variation in these measurements and weights. The 
heavy siege-guns took thirty-six horses to move, and could not 
go into the field. There were various patterns of guns, can- 



A LEATHER CANNON. 



43 



Three-pounder Regimental Gun. 

Calibre, 2.6 inches ; weight, 450 pounds. 
(Stockholm Artillery Museum.) 



non-royal, culverins, falconets, single and double (i. e. heavy 
and light) and mortars ; but the latter were not much used. 
All these pieces were extremely unhandy. The single cannon- 
royal was twelve feet long and called for twenty-four horses to 
transport it ; culverins needed sixteen. 

One of Gustavus' artillery officers, von Siegeroth, in doing 
practice work with guns, new 
and old, had found that 
shorter guns, properly con- 
structed, were equally ef- 
fective. In 1624 Gustavus 
commanded all old and 
unserviceable ordnance to be recast into newer patterns; 
and a year later he himself contrived a gun which one horse 
or three men could handle to good effect. This gun was in- 
tended as a regimental piece ; and each regiment had one and 
later two of them. It was an iron three- and four-pounder, 
and the cartridge, which weighed less than a pound and a 
half, consisted of the charge held in a thin turned wooden 
case, wired to the ball. This was the first artillery cartridge, 

the original fixed ammuni- 
tion. The gun was after- 
wards introduced into oth- 
er European armies as the 
piece Suedoise. Not only 
had it the virtue of lesser 
weight, but its cartridge 
was always ready, and it 
could be fired eight times 
to six shots of a musketeer with the awkward arm of the day. 
Gustavus' merit thus lay in making guns which could be 
handled more like our own than the cumbrous ordnance then 
in use. In the wars against the Poles he employed with 




Three-pounder Leather Gun. 

Calibre, 2.6 inches ; weight, 450 pounds. 
(Stockholm Artillery Museum.) 



44 



MORTARS. 



profit the so-called leather cannon, a fact which shows how 
lacking in power the artillery of the day must have been. 
These guns were invented in the early twenties by Colonel 
Wurmbrandt, and consisted of a thin copper tube reinforced 





Early Mortars. 

by iron rings and bands, then bound with rope set in cement, 
the whole covered with sole leather. The tube was made to 
screw in and out, as it grew heated by from eight to twelve 
discharges' and had to be cooled. The gun-carriage was 
shaped out of two oak planks. Three men could carry a gun, 
which without carriage weighed ninety pounds, and was fired 
with a light charge. Of fourteen of these cannon only is 
mention made ; and after being used in 1628-29 in Poland, 
they disappeared in favor of 
the king's four-pounder cast- 
iron guns. These last named 
regimental guns remained in 
common use in Europe until 
the artillery was reorganized 
and massed by Frederick. 
The capacity for evolutions 
and the rapidity of fire of 

Gustavus' batteries excited Early Mortar. 

universal admiration. Grape 

and canister were generally employed in the field-guns, round 

t hot only in siege-guns. Gustavus used his cannon in masses 




EARLY ENGLISH CANNON. 45 

as well as with regiments, and the excellence of his artillery 
largely contributed to his successes. This arm with the 
Swedes was immensely superior in effectiveness to that of 
any other European army ; the king was the first to show of 
what artillery was really capable. 

Mortars throwing bombs were first used at the siege of 
Lamotte in 1634. Hand grenades, shells, fire-balls, etc., came 
into more general use as the German chemists made their 
many new discoveries. Artillery-practice grew to be some- 
thing of a science ; experts took it up, and the troops were 
better instructed. The regimental guns were attended by 
grenadiers detailed for the work ; and there were special com- 
panies for the reserve guns. Musketeers supported the guns 
among the Swedes ; cavalry was wont to do so in the imperial 
army. 

In this connection the following extract from Holingshed's 
Chronicles, showing what English ordnance at the end of the 
sixteenth century was, may not be uninteresting : — 

The names of our greatest ordnance are commonly these : Robi- 
net, whose weight is two hundred pounds, and it hath one inch 
and a quarter within the mouth. Falconet weigheth five hundred 
pounds, and his wideness is two inches within the mouth. Falcon 
hath eight hundred pounds, and two inches and a half within the 
mouth ; Minion poiseth eleven hundred pounds, and hath three 
inches and a quarter within the mouth ; Sacre hath sixteen hundred 
pounds, and is three inches and a half wide in the mouth ; Demi- 
Culverin weigheth three thousand pounds, and hath four inches 
and a half within the mouth ; Gulverin hath four thousand pounds 
and five inches and a half within the mouth ; Demi-Cannon, six 
thousand pounds, and six inches and a half within the mouth ; 
Cannon, seven thousand pounds, and seven inches within the mouth ; 
E-Cannon, eight thousand pounds, and seven inches within the 
mouth ; Basilisk, nine thousand pounds, eight inches and three 



46 



POWDER AND BALLS. 



quarters within the mouth. By which proportions also it is easy to 
come by the weight of every shot, how many scores it doth flee at 
point blank, and how much powder is to be had to the same, and 
finally how many inches in height each bullet ought to carry. 



The Names of the Greatest 
Ordnance. 



Robinet . . . 

Falconet . . . 

Falcon . . . 

Minion . . . 

Sacre . . . . 
Demi-Culverin 

Culverin . . . 

Demi-Cannon . 

Cannon . . . 

E-Cannon . . 

Basilisk . . . 



Weight of 
the Shot. 



1 pound. 

2 pounds. 
2i pounds. 
4-J- pounds. 
5 pounds. 
9 pounds. 
18 pounds. 
30 pounds. 
60 pounds. 
42 pounds. 
60 pounds. 



Scores of 
Carriage. 




14 
16 
17 

18 
20 
25 
38 
20 
20 
21 



Pounds of 
Powder. 



0£ 

2 

2* 

5 

9 
18 
28 
44 
20 
60 



Height of 
Bullet. 



1 (inch) 

2} 
3 

H 

4 

H 

? 

4 




Culverin. (1500.) 



V. 

THE SWEDISH ORGANIZATION AND TACTICS. 1611-1632. 

Gustavus was unable early to uniform his troops, but he gave each a 
special color of regimental flag. In arms and equipment there was uniformity, 
and the men were warmly clad in their peasant's dress, and had waterproof 
fur-lined hoots for winter. His first improvement was to lessen the file to 
three deep in firing ; but the pikemen stood in close serried order, six deep. 
The brigades had alternate bodies of musketeers and pikemen, and foot was 
mixed with horse in parts of the line. All changes tended towards rapid fire 
and mobility. The cavalry from ten was also cut down to three ranks, and 
was ployed into column to charge. From an inert body Gustavus made it an 
active one. Though the artillery was used in masses, each regiment kept its 
own pieces. In battle the skirmishers held the ground while the line formed ; 
then the cavalry cleared the front, the artillery opened, and the line advanced, 
first to fire, then to push of pike. In marches Gustavus dispensed with a 
rear-guard when marching toward, with a van when marching from, the enemy. 
His men were rapid goers. In battle he paid keen heed to the terrain, and 
made his three arms work together. The discipline of the Swedes was wonder- 
ful ; good conduct was universal ; the usual military crimes were quite absent. 
The pay was small but regular ; the food was ample, and was obtained, not 
by plunder, but from magazines carefully provided. The troops were quar- 
tered in towns or fortified camps. The train was much decreased. Religious 
duties were strictly observed. Promotion went by seniority and service. 
Rewards and punishments were just. There were regimental schools for the 
children of soldiers, many of whom, as well as their wives, went with the 
troops. Loose women were not tolerated. As an engineer, Gustavus was far 
ahead of his day ; he had many experts ; fortification was wonderfully well 
done ; and field-works were constructed rapidly and efficiently. The Swedish 
navy as well as the army was largely increased and brought to a state of high 
efficiency. 

Gustavus Adolphus is usually referred to as the origi- 
nator of uniforms. This is not strictly correct. Some of the 
Swedish regiments were known by a color, not of the uniform 



48 SWEDISH UNIFORMS. 

but of the standard. Ehrenreuter's regiment had red silk 
for its ensign ; the Vizthum regiment, old blue ; Winkel's, 
blue ; Teuffel's, yellow ; Hepburn's, green ; the Pomeranian 
regiment, white ; the three Hanse regiments, black. The 
ensign was of one solid color, on which figured an emblem. 
Such was one of white damask, with the royal crown sur- 
mounted by a rose, and " Gustavus Adolphus " on one side, 
and on the other, " Touch me not or you '11 get burnt ; " 
or, again, a blood-red standard, with a flame and a figure 
bearing sword and scales, and the motto "For King and 
Justice." 

For many years Gustavus had no uniforms for his troops. 
At the beginning of his reign the men served, each in the 
peasant's dress in which he reported. In arms and equip- 
ment alone was there uniformity, save in so far as the peas- 
ants dressed alike. In 1613 a uniformed royal body-guard 
was organized, and in 1621 Gustavus ordered that the sol- 
diers of the line be clad alike so far as possible, instead of 
in the long jerkin and smock-frock of the peasant, " so that 
they should not be despised among the nations of the out- 
land." A year after he ordered that companies and regi- 
ments be uniformly clad ; but all this took time. The clothing 
of the Swedish peasant was coarse, but being hand-made it 
wore well, and a good garment might not be lightly dis- 
carded. So that even in 1626 people spoke of the Swedes 
as ill-appearing louts in bad clothes. The uniformed troops 
indeed donned their uniforms only on dress occasions, as at 
the visit of princes, or at reviews in their honor. They some- 
times had holiday insignia issued for special use; at the 
Altmarkt Conference the men on duty wore blue and gold 
tabards. When the matter got settled, the men appear to 
have worn a sleeveless tunic and loose knee-breeches, which, 
indeed, was the national cut of dress ; and over this their 



NATIONAL DRESS. 



49 




Suit worn by Gusta- 
vus at the Dirschau 
Combat. (Stock- 
holm Museum.) 



armor and equipments. An undergarment covered the arms ; 

the legs were clad in coarse woolen stockings and the feet 

in shoes or bootees, according to season, for the foot and 

dragoons ; in boots for the cavalry. The infantryman wore 

at times a species of gaiter from the knee down. Clothing 

depots were established at several of the 

Swedish cities ; but although the work was 

all done in these depots, the patterns are 

said to have come from Paris, then already 

the centre of fashions, small and great. It 

is true that Gustavus eventually arrived at 

uniforming his troops ; for years his efforts 

lay in that direction, but he aimed still more 

at providing warm and useful clothing. The 

men had fur garments and gloves, fur-lined 

boots and woolen stockings, and many had a 

sort of Russian bootee of waterproof leather. 

These were in part issued to the troops, in part bought by 

the individual soldiers. It was the protection afforded by 

such clothing that enabled Gustavus to conduct his winter 

campaigns in Germany, — to the astonishment and confusion 

of his enemies. 

The chief improvement in the tactical formation, and this 
was brought about by the introduction of gunpowder, lay in 
the lessening of the depth of the file ; and yet it is curious 
how old-fashioned soldiers like Tilly stuck to their deep bat- 
tles when artillery was becoming effective. Gustavus made 
many other changes in the formation and manoeuvring of the 
troops. Infantry had already got set up in not exceeding ten 
ranks. The musketeers stood in closed files but with open 
ranks, which gave space for the rank which had fired to 
retire to reload, and they sometimes attacked in open order, 
almost in what we should call a skirmish line ; the pikemen 



50 



DEPTH OF FILE. 




Swedish Musketeer. 



stood in closed ranks and 
files. Gustavus first reduced 
the formation of musketeers 
to six ranks, which for firing 
closed into three ; this re- 
mained the pattern for many 
years, and at the close of the 
Thirty Years' War was uni- 
versal. The battle disap- 
peared, and was succeeded 
by a proper fire line. 

a In line the pike- 

men were placed 

in the centre, with the musketeers on the flanks 
or grouped at the corners of the bodies ; or else 
the divisions of musketeers and pikemen alternated. 
A mass of men ready for action was called a tertia, 
or battalion (battle), or squadron. In Germany 
and Spain these battles were several thousand 
strong; among the French they consisted of not 
over five or six hundred men. Gustavus 
first brigaded his regiments, and gave to 
many brigades a peculiar color of standard. 
The exigencies of the service demanded fre- 
quent changes, and we hear of brigades of 
two regiments formed in five lines, of which 
the two rear ones were the reserve, and in 
them the divisions of pikemen and musket- 
eers alternated. Such a formation is shown 
in Lord Reay's sketch, of which later ; but 
it was not universal. Or again, the brigade 
was set up in three lines, so as to show more 
Swedish Pikeman. front; this was the formation adopted by 



*^ 




SWEDISH BRIGADES. 



51 



Gustavus at Breitenfeld. At still another period the brigade 
was formed with a division of pikemen in advance, and four 
divisions of musketeers in two lines in the rear. At Liitzen, 
a dozen Swedish companies were ployed into column, one 
behind the other, and had eight companies in one line as a 
reserve. Any one of these brigade-formations was handier 
in movement, and less endangered by artillery, than the usual 
deep masses ; and it was particularly use- 
ful from having the reserve to call upon. 

It seems odd that there should not be 
more certainty as to the organization and 
minor tactics of an army of modern days ; 
but matters were in a transition period, 
due to the constant improvements in bal- 
listics, and there is no moment of time 
when any one method universally obtained, 
even in Sweden. It might be difficult, 
when arms of precision call forth so many 
changes, to say just what the organization 
of infantry is to-day, or may be within five 
years. Going back to include our civil 
war, in view of the changes in all civilized 
countries, it might indeed puzzle one to state without great 
prolixity just what a regiment or a brigade is ; and records 
were not so carefully kept in the seventeenth century. Many 
of the foreign regiments in Gustavus' army had each its own 
formation and drill, which it was wise not to alter, lest the 
efficiency of the body should be affected. 

Taught by his studies, Gustavus revived the ancient habit 
of mixing small detachments of infantry with cavalry. He 
made these composite bodies from two hundred to four hun- 
dred stroug, and gave each one a field-gun. On important 
occasions he detailed men from different organizations to 
form a corps & elite of musketeers. 




Swedish Officer. 



52 



SWEDISH CAVALRY. 



The infantry commonly fired in salvos by ranks, succeed- 
ing ranks coming forward, while the one which had fired 
retired through the intervals to reload. Gustavus introduced 
the habit of having the front rank kneel so as to fire with- 
out shifting ranks, as this was apt to unsettle the line. On 
occasion he used what was virtually a fire by file. 

The cavalry had hitherto been formed in from four to ten 
ranks. Gustavus cut it down to three ranks, which much 
increased its mobility. The fancy skirmishing (caracoles} 
was abolished, as well as the use of firearms as the sole 
resource in the attack. The king insisted that the squadrons 
should charge at a gallop with pistols or naked blade ; a style 
quite in accordance with his own tremendous fire and energy. 

The Swedish cavalry rode in 
two or more lines, company in 
rear of company, or checker- 
wise ; occasionally in one line 
en muraille. Other horse still 
relied on its fire alone, which 
made it excessively slow. 
There were exceptions : no 
better cavalry stood in line 
than splendid Pappenheim's ; 
but as a rule the cavalry of 
the day was inert. With Gus- 
tavus, on the contrary, even 
the dragoon partook more of 
the impulse of the cavalry- 
man than of the stolidity of the - infantry soldier ; while in 
the other armies the dragoon remained a mere well-trans- 
ported footman. In his intelligent management of both these 
arms Gustavus soon had imitators. His victories showed 
the superiority of his system so thoroughly that the whole 




Swedish Cuirassier. 



ACTS OF A BATTLE. 



53 



world turned from the ancient methods to study what he had 
introduced. 

It was the habit in all armies to place the horse in the 
wings; and a sort of precedence by seniority that decided 
the place in line made the con- 
stant shifting of regiments awk- 
ward and dangerous. Gustavus 
kept cavalry in the wings, but he 
also placed cavalry companies in 
rear of each line of infantry, 
where they served to aid in re- 
establishing any sudden check. 

The artillery was posted along 
the front, or on advantageous 
ground. Under Gustavus the 
three arms supported each other 
much in the modern way. Herein 
consisted the value of the king's 
method. His army became a well- 
designed machine, with all parts 
operating smoothly, instead of a disjointed mass, whose sev- 
eral parts worked out of time, and failed at the critical mo- 
ment to sustain one another. 

The acts of a battle were these. The ground was first 
held by the small bodies of skirmishers, who, from their dan- 
gerous calling, were called forlorn hopes, or enfants per- 
dus ; and behind these the lines quietly formed in parallel 
order. Then, often not waiting to withdraw these skirmish- 
ers, the cavalry charged down the front to clear out the cur- 
tain they had formed, to the destruction of friend and foe 
alike ; which done, the artillery opened fire along the entire 
line. Under its smoke the cavalry — usually on the flanks — 
would charge again ; the foot would get into musket-range, 




Swedish Ensign of Cuirassiers. 



I 



54 BATTLE ORDER. 

and if it could unsettle the enemy, would finally come to 
" push of pike." There being rarely anything like grand- 
tactics, or a battle plan, the lines got much intermixed. 
Whichever side could retain the best semblance of formation, 
or rather the side which showed the less confusion, would be 
apt to win. 

An army marched usually in van-guard, main force and 
rear-guard ; Gustavus dispensed with rear-guard when march- 
ing towards the enemy. Light troops formed the van and 
flankers. There were two or three columns, each a line 
when in order of battle, and so formed that the platoons or 
companies could readily wheel into line. Occasionally the 
columns marched checker-wise. Armies began to get over 
more ground than formerly; especially the Swedes made 
good marches ; but the rate was not equal to the best of this 
century. 

In battles more heed was now paid to topography, and 
the operations were better suited to it. Artillery played a 
more decided role. The utility of reserves came into recog- 
nition. While the order of battle remained parallel and there 
was no grand-tactics, yet flanking marches, the advance of 
a second line through a wearied first line, and other like 
manoeuvres, were not uncommon. Gustavus made none but 
parallel front attacks. The value of his tactics lay in the 
disposition of the troops : in so placing the pikemen as to 
cover the musketeers ; the musketeers as to sustain the pike- 
men; while each brigade sustained the other and each was 
all-sufficient to itself, with well-protected flanks, like a small 
movable fortress. But it was rather the mobility of each 
separate body than its solidity which lent it self-sustaining- 
power. 

The parent of grand-tactics is ability to manoeuvre ; with- 
out mobility bodies cannot do this ; and Gustavus, from the 



SWEDISH PEASANTRY. 55 

new conditions imposed by gunpowder, first wrought out 
details which, enabled men to move rapidly on the battle-field. 
Basing on his work, later commanders introduced what we 
now know as grand-tactics. Gustavus^ especially saw how to 
adapt his troops and position to the topography and the con- 
ditions ; he seized the vital moment in a battle and made 
the most of it. To him belongs the credit of first, in modern 
times, forcing the passage of a rapid river in the face of a 
strong and able enemy. And even though he failed in his 
assault on the Alte Veste, Gustavus showed the world that 
there need be no hesitancy in storming intrenchments or 
strong positions. Both operations had imitators. 

As the king's was better than any other European army in 
organization, so it was superior in discipline and esprit de 
corps. The Swedish primeval peasantry was excellent ; big- 
fisted and stout-hearted, it in no wise feared danger or suffer- 
ing. The Swedes " do not defend their men with walls, but 
their walls with men " was a contemporary saying. Since 
they had emerged from serfdom many peasants had acquired 
property, and each proprietor was held to furnish a man to 
the government or to the army. The crown had grown to 
rely greatly on the people, and the reason the Vasa family 
had so strong a hold on the masses was that they always 
sided with the peasantry against the nobles and clergy. 

The pay of the Swedish troops was small ; the narrow 
exchequer of the country allowed no greater. The budget 
in 1630 was twelve million rix dollars ; but the troops were 
regularly paid during the life of Gustavus Adolphus. There 
is no table in the Swedish archives which details the entire 
pay-roll, and there is some question as to the amounts. The 
several records vary greatly. The following strikes us as 
high; but we do not know what each officer had to maintain, 
or what deductions may have been made for rations, clothing, 



56 PAY OF ARMY. 

arms, etc. A lower scale is given in other records. The pay 
of the generals and staff was : Field marshal, 1,000 rix dol- 
lars a month ; colonel-general of artillery, 600 ; colonel and 
chief of scouts and colonel and chief quartermaster, 500 
each ; colonel and quartermaster of cavalry, 300. The rate 
of pay of the lesser staff-officers was presumably assimilated 
to that of their regimental grade. 

The scale of regimental pay in the foot was : — 

Colonel , . ■ • - 184 rix dollars a month. 

Lieutenant-colonel 80 " " 

Major 61 " " " 

Chief quartermaster 30 " " 

Chaplains (2) each 18 " 

Judge advocates (2) each 30 " " 

Surgeons (4) each 12 " 

Eegimental clerk 30 " " " 

Clerk of council of war 18 " " 

Provost-marshals (4) each 12 " " 

Assistant of marshal 10 " " 

Beadles (2) each 3 " " 

Hangman 7 " " 

The scale of company pay was : — 

Captain 61 rix dollars a month. 

Lieutenant 30 " " 

Ensign (ancient) 30 " " 

Sergeants (2) each 9 " 

Assistant ensign 7 " " 

Assistant quartermaster 7 " 

Armorer 7 " " 

Company clerk 7 " " 

Musicians 4 " 

Corporals (6) each 6 " " 

File leaders (15) each 5 " " 

Under leaders (2) each 4 " " 

Privates . . . . , 3£ " 

Officers' servants 3 " " 



QUARTERS AND RATIONS. 57 

In the cavalry the rates were considerably higher, — espe- 
cially for the field-officers. 

The troops were fed from magazines, — one of the most 
important of the improvements of Gustavus, who established 
depots in suitable localities, and saw to it that they were kept 
full from Sweden, or by systematic contributions from the 
countries traversed. There was a regular staff of commis- 
saries who distributed provisions to the regiments in bulk, 
and they were then issued to the men by the major, who seems 
also to have been charged with the fatigue and policing duties 
of the camp. Sutlers or traders were permitted at times to 
set up their booths near by. During Gustavus' life the troops 
were well cared for ; after his death things went on in a more 
hap-hazard way, and the army was apt to be fed and paid 
from the results of plunder. 

Gustavus quartered his troops in towns or cities ; if in for- 
tified camps, in huts or tents. Wherever they were, camp 
and garrison duties were obligatory, and discipline was never 
relaxed. 

The baggage-train was much decreased by Gustavus. A 
cavalry company was allowed ten wagons ; an infantry com- 
pany three, the regimental staff eight. To us this seems a 
large allowance ; but the train and camp-followers of an army 
in the seventeenth century were far beyond any modern 
limit. 

The one thing which made Gustavus' army a power was the 
infusion of the man himself into its very pith. The Swedish 
troops were instinct with strong religious feeling, and exhibited 
the qualities that spring from it, — good behavior, obedience, 
absence of crime, cheerful courage and good discipline. At 
the root of this lay Gustavus' own example, which was a 
never- varying pattern of soldierly bearing. Eegular morning 
and evening prayers were introduced by the king ; he first 



58 REGULATIONS. 

commissioned chaplains. Before battle there was a service 
by the priests, and a dedication of the army to the service of 
God. Regular days of prayer were appointed at intervals 
in General Orders, and Gustavus caused to be printed and 
distributed to the army a special Soldiers' Prayer-Book. In 
Germany it was to most men a wonderful sight to see the 
distinguished field-marshal kneeling upon the ground beside 
the humblest private in earnest prayer. 

Promotion went strictly by seniority and services ; nepotism 
was unknown. The highest in the land must begin at the 
foot of the military ladder, as the king himself had done. 

At the siege of Riga, in 1621, Gustavus issued a set of field 
regulations which long remained in force. They established 
a regimental court-martial, of which the commanding officer 
was president and " assessors " elected by the regiment were 
members ; and a standing general court-martial, which had 
the royal marshal of Sweden as president and higher officers 
as members. To the monarch was the last appeal. Provost- 
marshals might arrest on suspicion any offender, and imprison 
and bring him before the court ; but they might not hang for 
any offense, except resistance to their orders. The regimental 
court tried for thieving, insubordination, cowardice and all 
minor crimes ; the higher court had cognizance of civil causes 
in the army, treason and the more serious crimes. Decima- 
tion, by beheading or hanging, was the lot of any regiment 
which ran away in action, and the regiment was thenceforth 
held to lie out of camp and do menial service till it retrieved 
itself. " Riding the wooden horse " with a musket tied to 
each foot, shackles, bread-and- water-arrest, were common. 
There was no flogging. Even small breaches of discipline 
were severely punished, and misdemeanors were visited impar- 
tially with regard to persons. The higher crimes were pun- 
ished with death, among others theft, plunder, violence to 



DUELING. 59 

women, cowardice, or the surrender of a fortress, except in 
extremity. The articles of war were excellent. The universal 
testimony is that there were few breaches of discipline. But 
they did occur : in 1631, Gustavus had to issue an adhorta- 
torium to the troops on account of acts of plunder, and a 
number of men were executed. As a rule, however, the Swed- 
ish soldiers were exemplary, in word and deed, far beyond 
the soldier of that century. An officers' tribunal or court of 
honor existed for passing on their misdoings. Gustavus was 
especially severe on dueling, which was forbidden under pain 
of death. It is related that he permitted two officers, who 
especially requested leave, to meet ; that he himself attended 
the duel, and said to the principals : " Now, gentlemen, at it, 
and stop you not till one of you is killed ! Moreover, I have 
the provost-marshal at hand, who will at once execute the 
other ! " Cheerful prospect ! 

A soldier's wife was allowed to accompany the regiment ; 
but the bane of the German army, a troop of loose women 
among the camp-followers, was unknown. In each regiment 
were schools for the children of soldiers, many of whom, 
according to the curious custom of those days, accompanied 
their fathers, even on campaigns. As crimes were remorse- 
lessly punished, so were services adequately rewarded, by pro- 
motion, presents of money and pensions. But excellent as 
it was, it must be admitted that the perfect organization of 
the Swedish army did not outlive Gustavus himself. 

All other European armies at this time were alike, and 
characterized by disorder and indiscipline. The troops were 
rarely paid, ill-fed and scantily clothed. The officers were 
over-luxurious ; the men barely provided for. The troops 
were carelessly quartered in the towns or wherever it came 
easiest, and their presence was the signal of grievous oppres- 
sion ; while in the wake of a marching army stalked desola- 



60 ENGINEERING. 

tion. The baggage -train was enormous, as the men were 
permitted to carry along their plunder, and the number of 
non-combatants is hard to credit. In one army of forty 
thousand men, one hundred and forty thousand camp-follow- 
ers are said to have been counted. The armies were full of 
cut-throats, outcasts and soldiers of fortune, and their con- 
duct was that of highway robbers, even in the land of friends. 
Despite capital punishment for a number of crimes, and the 
penalty was often exacted, such a body could not be kept 
from gruesome atrocities, from which indeed neither man, 
woman nor child escaped. But prisoners had come to be 
well treated because they were expected to pay ransoms ; and 
acts of heroism were not uncommon. Rewards were as marked 
as punishments. Especially Wallenstein was distinguished 
for the severity of his punishments and the splendor of his 
rewards. 

Gustavus was himself an expert, and he organized a superb 
corps of engineers. In Germany, folk were astonished to 
see scores of men of science accompany the army, and to 
note the way they were put to use in intrenching positions. 
Franz von Traytor was the " general of fortifications," or, as 
we should say, chief of engineers ; and an engineer -officer 
named Porticus was noted for excellent work. There was a 
special corps of miners ; but the entire army was drilled in 
throwing up fortifications and in pontoon-bridging. Even the 
cavalry were taught to throw a bridge. By spreading this 
knowledge so thoroughly throughout the army, Gustavus could 
intrench himself on unavailable ground, and quickly repair 
and make serviceable the walls of places he captured. He 
wrote a series of " Instructions " on this subject which are 
clear and sound. He had learned all that the Netherlands 
had to teach, and had bettered on some of it. 

Field-fortification in this era was common. Outlying posts 



RANK AND COMMAND. 61 

were defended by redoubts and star-shaped forts with pali- 
sades, drawbridges and all manner of entanglements. Armies 
in the field, as well as those besieging strong places, covered 
themselves with works more or less complicated. A camp 
was not dissimilar to the Roman camp, with its wall and 
ditch, streets of tents, parade-ground and careful divisions, 
the difference being mainly one of arms and organization. 
Gustavus adopted the system of field-fortification which had 
been brought to perfection in the Netherlands ; but he altered 
it in many ways. Instead of having a single line of unbroken 
works, he would build a series of mutually supporting isolated 
works, in two or more lines. In his camps he placed his 
troops with a much greater front than usual, and allowed 
each regiment to have its baggage in its own rear. 

Rank and command were as follows : The king was supreme. 
Next came the royal marshal. Over a large army there was 
a general-field-colonel, and over smaller armies, commanders, 
general-commanders and field-marshals. In 1623 there were 
only two commanders, Jacob de la Gardie and Hermann 
Wrangel. There were field-majors, and general-field-majors. 
Bernard von Thiirn, who came to Sweden from the Nether- 
lands with a regiment of foot, was made a general-field-major. 
Then came colonels, lieutenant-colonels and majors, and then 
the company officers. In 1626 there were fifteen colonels and 
nineteen lieutenant-colonels. In 1630 Gustavus Horn was 
made field-marshal, Ake Tott and John Baner generals. 
The nucleus of a general staff was begun ; Kniphausen was 
its chief, and he was succeeded by Baudissin. The chief 
of artillery in Germany was the twenty-seven-year-old, but 
exceptionally able, Colonel Torstenson. 

Permanent fortification was rather blindly borrowed from 
the system of the Netherlands. Sieges were formally con- 
ducted with lines of circum- and contra-vallation carefully 



62 



THE NAVY. 



prepared. Regular trenches, as we understand them, did not 
appear till towards the end of the Thirty Years' War. The 
means of siege was laborious rather than scientific ; nor can 
it be claimed that Gustavus was peculiarly able in his sieges. 
The navy was much increased. Many ships were bought 
in Germany ; more were built by Swedish private capital. In 
1630 the Mercury of thirty-two guns was the flagship. The 
Westerwik had twenty-six guns, the Apollo and Pelican 
twenty each, the Andromeda eighteen, the Rainbow thirteen, 
the Stork twelve, the Parrot ten, the Black Dog eight, the 
Dolphin two. In 1632 there were five admirals and fifty-four 
ships of war, whose crews numbered from forty-eight to one 
hundred and sixty men. 




^ITT 



Cannon suggested in the 15th Century. 



VI. 

THE YOUNG PRINCE AND KING. 1611-1617. 

Gustavus Vasa, the grandfather of Gustavus Adolphus, was a prince of 
exceptional force. He introduced Protestantism into Sweden, raised and edu- 
cated the peasantry, and took their part against the priests and nohles. He 
fostered commerce and created a merchant marine. All the Vasas were able, 
cultured and strong ; hut there was a touch of insanity in the family. Erie 
showed it and was deposed. John had a tendency to Romanism, and his son 
Sigismund turned Catholic on inheriting from his mother the throne of Poland. 
By this act he forfeited the Swedish crown ; and Charles, the father of our 
hero, was made king. Gustavus was horn in 1594, was carefully educated, and 
showed wonderful ability. He mastered several languages and was a keen 
student. His character as a lad was the promise of the man ; he was a good 
writer and a fine speaker, and was physically strong, open hearted, brave and 
religious. At eleven he entered the army, and was allowed to attend the 
meetings of the royal council. He watched the Russian campaign of 1610, and 
engaged in that of 1611 against Denmark. Though only successful in part, he 
showed intelligence, persistency and marked originality in what he did. Charles 
IX. died this year, and Gustavus, who, though only seventeen, was at once 
crowned, found himself at war with Russia, Poland and Denmark. The cam- 
paign of 1612 exhibited ability ; but it was only successful in so far as it enabled 
Sweden to make a peace by purchasing from Denmark some territory in 1613. 
Next year there were no operations, but in 1615-16 the young king attacked 
Russia from Finland and won a large strip of territory. The eyes of Europe 
began to be attracted to him. In 1617 Russia ceded the conquered provinces, 
and the war closed. 

The grandfather of Gustavus Adolphus, the great Gus- 
tavus Vasa (1523-1560), was a man of sound and powerful 
character, and a truly noteworthy Protestant prince. It was 
he who laid the foundation of the growth of Sweden. When 
he came to the throne, the Swedes were all but a semi-barbar- 
ous people, who, said the king, were so shortsighted as to rob 



64 GUSTAVUS VASA. 

every merchant who ventured among them. The Reforma- 
tion did so much for the country, however, that a hundred 
years later Gustavus Adolphus saw his people as advanced in 
intelligence and culture as any nation of northern Europe ; 
and the Swedish nobility held high rank among the aristo- 
cracies of the Continent. The growth of Lutheranism in 
Sweden was not merely a religious revival ; it was largely due 
to political facts. Gustavus Vasa, its founder, though a great 
man, was far from a profoundly religious man ; but he saw 
that by confiscating the estates of the church, he could help 
forward the national finances as well as bind the nobles to his 
cause ; and that by getting rid of the priests, who all desired 
a single and Catholic Scandinavia under the rule of Denmark, 
he would establish his own family more firmly on the throne. 
It was he, in fact, who made the throne hereditary in the 
Vasa family. In addition to introducing Protestantism, Gus- 
tavus I. established a commerce for Sweden by favoring the 
middle class as against the nobles ; and he added largely to 
the territory of the country by means of encroachments on his 
neighbors that were equally in fashion then as now. It was 
this head of the Vasas who created the Swedish fleet, and who 
improved the style of ship-building by bringing Venetian 
workmen to instruct his own thorough but less subtle design- 
ers. Under him the Swedish merchant marine grew to a 
reputable size. Gustavus Vasa left his crown to his eldest, 
and dukedoms to his other sons, and was succeeded in turn 
by his first son Eric, his second son John and the latter's son 
Sigismund ; and then by his fourth son Charles IX., the 
father of Gustavus Adolphus. 1 

The entire family were able men and broad. The Vasas 
stood so far above any of the other Swedes that they may be 
said to have reigned by a sort of Homeric right. Not only 

1 See Yasa Family-Tree, page 65. 



S1GISMUND. 65 

possessed of force of character and brains, most of them were 
highly cultured, well read in literature, and versed in the arts 
and sciences. Many were truly noble men. The Vasa blood 
had a markedly good strain. 

King Eric was able, but he showed evidences of the insan- 
ity which, coupled to its vigorous intellect, unquestionably 
resided in the Vasa family. He was deposed in 1567, and 
his brother John ascended the throne. John inclined to 
Catholicism, though he never avowed so much ; but he mar- 
ried Catherine Jarghellon of Poland, and when the Jarghel- 
lon monarchs died out, his son Sigismund was made king of 
Poland, and, as was imperative, became a Catholic at the 
same time. 

In order not to forfeit his claim to the throne of Sweden 
by his change of religion, Sigismund granted extravagant 
privileges to the nobles ; but the country had a parliamen- 
tary government, the four Estates — nobles, clergy, citizens, 
peasants — having each a voice, and the three last named 
were stanch Protestants. Despite Sigismund's efforts, even 
by force of arms, to make Sweden a Catholic country, he 
failed in his end, was eventually deprived of the crown, and 



VASA FAMILY-TREE. 
Gustavus Vasa (I.) 1523-1560. 

Eric XIV. John III. Magnus. Anna Maria=Charles IX.= Christina 



1560-1568. i56S-1592 of the 

=Catherine Jarghellon. Palatinate. 



Sigismund, John, 

1592-1604, d. 1622. 



King of Poland. 



1604-1611. 



of Holstein. 



I : I 1 

Catherine=John Casimir. Gustavus (II.) Adolphus, Charles 

1611-1632, Philip, 

Charles X. 1654-1660. =Maria Elinore d. 1622. 

I of Brandenburg. 

Charles XII. 1697-1718. Christina. 

1632-1654. 



66 CHARLES IX. 

retired to Poland, breathing vengeance. In 1604 Charles 
IX. became king, and the throne was entailed on his eldest 
son, Gustavus Adolphus, and his descendants, " being Protes- 
tants." With this patriarchal family back of him, the prince 
came honestly by his ability, his uprightness, his courage and 
his energy. 

Gustavus II., or Gustavus Adolphus, was born in Stock- 
holm, December 19 (N. S.), 1594, son by his second wife of 
the then Duke Charles, whose nephew Sigismund was on the 
throne. By his first wife Charles had had but one daughter, 
Catherine, who married Count John Casimir, and became the 
life-long friend and adviser of the future monarch, and the 
progenitress of the succeeding kings. 

Charles was not as brilliant as most of the Vasas, but he 
was practical to the last degree, a quality at the time of more 
importance than high culture ; the mother of Gustavus had 
that which Charles lacked, and the young prince was sur- 
rounded by every advantage which strong intelligence and 
high mental and moral aims could bring him. If Charles IX. 
wanted some of the burly intellectual qualities of the family, 
he none the less exhibited in a high degree the common-sense 
ability of his father. He did much for the military organi- 
zation of the kingdom ; he compiled the first code of Swedish 
laws ; he labored hard at the financial status and equalization 
of taxes, and gave a new impetus to mining; he ordered 
topographical surveys of the kingdom to be made ; and he 
prepared the way for his son in a fashion which could scarcely 
have been bettered. 

Charles was happily born to reign over an unspoiled peo- 
ple. The Swedish peasantry was rude and ignorant, but it 
was stout and loyal. Like the soil of New England, the 
Scandinavian land had trained its dwellers to work and to 
endure ; and religion had made them earnest and true. In 



GUSTAVUS AS A CHILD. 67 

fact, his faith represented to the Swedish peasant his fealty 
to both God and king, much as it does to the Russian of 
to-day, but with a broader intelligence. 

Gustavus Adolphus was a lad of great personal beauty 
and strength, and his naturally alert mind was a pregnant 
soil for careful training. Even in his boyhood he showed 
that breadth of quality which later in life lent him such 
preeminence, — a deep and earnest religious nature, strongly 
imbued with the tenets of Protestantism, an unswerving 
moral character, warm affections, great amiability, frankness 
and a strict sense of rectitude. Coupled with these from ear- 
liest youth there were noted in him that species of courage 
which absolutely ignores danger, and those habits of mind 
and heart which are wont to call forth the manly virtues. 
And as this species of character usually possesses its purely 
human side, so we find in the king certain failings in temper 
and tricks of thought which all the more endear him to us. 
He was not a mere king of high heels and wig and ermine 
cloak ; he was a man enacting his role in the face and eyes 
of all the world. 

Many a pretty story is told of his childhood. " Do not 
go into that wood," said his nurse to him one day ; " there 
are big snakes there ! " " But just give me a stout stick," 
replied the brave little fellow, " and I '11 soon kill them all ! " 
One day, when he was taken to see a naval review, an officer 
of rank asked him which ship he preferred. " Why, that 
one there," replied the five-year-old prince. " And why, Your 
Royal Highness ? " " Because she has got the most guns." 
It was natural that his tastes should run to war ; it was part 
of the Vasa education as well as inheritance. 

The lad was a close student, and took a keen interest in 
languages, sciences and helles-lettres. His education was con- 
ducted under the oversight of his father and mother, and of 



68 



HIS TUTORS. 




Axel Oxenstiern. 



Axel Oxenstiern, who later became his prime minister as well 
as most intimate friend. His father drew up a memorandum 
of routine for him, which, by no means lacking the same reli- 
gious impulse, stands out for its common sense in marked 

contrast to that drawn up by the 
father of Frederick the Great. 
Charles had the utmost faith in 
the future of Gustavus. I lie 
faciei, said he on his death-bed, 
when an unusually knotty ques- 
tion arose which had puzzled him 
and his council, and which he was 
fain to put into other hands. 

Gustavus' masters were selected 
after consultation with the Swed- 
ish Estates. His special tutor 
was John Skytte, clerk of the 
supreme court, assisted by a German, Helmer (or Otto) von 
Morner, both traveled men and able ; Count de la Gardie 
was his military instructor, and later one of his trusted 
generals. Sweden was noted for inviting distinguished for- 
eigners to its court, and never failed to make the best use 
of their abilities. 

Gustavus became an exceptionally clever linguist. He 
read and could fairly express himself in Greek, Latin, Dutch, 
Italian, Russian and Polish, beside his native tongue ; he 
read history to good effect, — Xenophon in the original was 
his favorite book, — and was well rounded in his studies. 
During his campaigns, Grotius' Commentary, " De Jure Belli 
et Pacis," was his constant companion. He has left us a 
history of the Vasas which is distinguished by its clear grasp 
of his subject and dignified style ; he spoke and wrote with 
equal pointedness and force, and was considered to be the 



HE ENTERS THE ARMY. 69 

best orator in Sweden. Many of his poems, particularly the 
religious ones, are still sung by rich and poor in Sweden, as 
Luther's are in Germany. In gymnastic sports, and in the 
use of weapons, he was unexcelled, and was a skillful horse- 
man. Not only had he courage, but his bodily strength and 
health were exceptional. On one occasion, when he felt an 
attack of fever coming on from undue exposure, he sweated 
it off by a prolonged and violent fencing-bout with young 
Count Brahe. His temper was exceedingly quick, and in 
his youth a blow followed a word with scarce an interval ; 
but he always made honest and ample amends for his has- 
tiness, and later in life he learned the rare virtue of self- 
control. The eyes of all Sweden were early riveted on the 
promising heir to the throne, and great things were hoj)ed 
of him. 

When, in 1604, Gustavus reached ten years of age, his 
cousin Sigismund had already been deposed on account of his 
Catholic fanaticism, which had pushed him to acts intolerable 
to the Swedes, and Gustavus' father, as Charles IX., sat 
upon the throne. Sigismund retired to Poland, and both he 
and his powerful kingdom threatened and proved to be the 
most dangerous opponents Sweden could have. 

In his eleventh year Gustavus entered the army at the 
lowest step, and worked his way patiently up. As a training 
in statecraft he was allowed to sit at the meetings of the 
ministry, and the council soon learned to appreciate his 
worth. Quite without pedantry, — a thing which speaks 
volumes for his instructors, — the lad exhibited a clean-cut 
idea of the strength and weakness of Sweden, of its proper 
role in the economy of northern Europe, and of his own 
duties as future ruler. The death of Philip II. had relieved 
hordes of soldiers of fortune from duty in the Netherlands, 
and many men trained in this famous school of war came 



70 HIS FIRST CAMPAIGN. 

to Stockholm to offer their services to the king, who was 
expected soon to measure swords with Poland. These vet- 
erans were dear to Gustavus, because from them he learned 
of the warlike deeds of Maurice of Nassau, his special hero. 
War was even then his pride and his dream ; the old Viking 
blood throbbed lustily in his veins. 

Much to his chagrin, Gustavus was not permitted to serve 
in the Russian campaign of 1610, but he went to Finland 
and watched it near by under the guidance of de la Gardie ; 
and when he reached the age of seventeen, his father, with 
the consent of the Estates, declared him of age, — " worthy 
of wearing a sword," — and he was given a small command 
in the war with Denmark in 1611. 

The Goth was strong in the young prince; it seethed 
indeed in the Vasa blood: Eric at times showed the tiger 
instinct ; prosaic Charles once challenged the king of Den- 
mark to personal combat. And in this his first taste of 
war, Gustavus showed the utmost coolness and disregard of 
danger, riding up into the immediate vicinity of the enemy 
when out reconnoitring, and scanning them through his glass, 
quite unconscious that fear was an instinct with most men. 

The young general raised some forces in West Gothland 
and essayed to relieve Kalmar, then under siege ; but fortune 
seemed to favor the Danes, who captured the fortress as well 
as Elfsborg on the west coast. Young Gustavus, however, 
shipped his detachment over to Oland, and took this island 
and the fortress of Borgholm. On his return there fell into 
his hands a letter from the Danish commander of the small 
fortress of Christianopel, begging the Danish king for five 
hundred horse. Gustavus at once made use of this lucky 
accident. He clad five hundred Swedes in Danish fashion, 
led them himself to Christianopel, reached the place at night, 
was admitted, and took possession of the fortress. These 



THE BALTIC. 



71 



early exploits showed the stuff of which the prince was made, 
and exhibited that ability to utilize favorable opportunities 
which later became so marked a trait. 




Genius for war is only genius given a warlike direction. 
The same mental tissue which makes the poet, the astrono- 
mer or the musician, if coupled to vigorous character, and 



72 SWEDEN'S NEIGHBORS. 

given the opportunities of war, will- make the captain. But 
the character must eqixal the intellect, and the opportunity- 
be of the highest. 

During the reign of Charles IX. Sweden was but a small 
and unconsidered country. Beside Stockholm, her only cities 
of importance were Westeras, Orebro and Kalmar. Gothen- 
borg did not grow to be important until after Gustavus' 
death. Sweden's neighbors were, moreover, all in a position 
and mood to push her hard. Denmark held the key to the 
Baltic by her two fortresses of Kronborg (Elsinore) and 
Helsingborg on either side of The Sound, and the southern 
provinces of the Swedish peninsula, as well as all Norway, 
belonged to the Danish crown. Sweden could reach the sea 
only by the river Gote, at the mouth of which was the for- 
tress Elf sborg, and this, though in Swedish hands, was largely 
neutralized by the not far distant Danish fortress of Bohus. 
Thus holding the key of the Baltic, Denmark claimed to con- 
trol its commerce, and was a neighbor much to be dreaded. 
One of the dreams of Christian IV. was once more to organ- 
ize a single Scandinavian dynasty under the rule of his own 
house ; an aspiration that made him anti-Swedish to the core. 
Holland had also asserted herself in the commerce of the 
Baltic, but not in such a manner as to provoke war. All 
she desired was free trade everywhere and non-interference. 

War with Russia, then a minor power, had been going on 
for some years, for Sigismund and Charles IX. were each 
seeking to place on the Russian throne a claimant friendly to 
his own interest. Apart from politics, the matter resolved 
itself into a struggle for Livonia between Sweden and Poland, 
and at the time of Charles' death, Sweden had obtained a 
sort of foothold in that province. Russia's ambition was to 
recover her Baltic possessions, and the king of Poland was 
intent on regaining the crown of Sweden. 



GUSTAVUS MADE KING. 73 

The only other prince who had a hand in the game of 
northern European politics was George William, the elector 
of Brandenburg. This sleepy potentate had no broader idea 
of policy than to hold on to what he already had, and to keep 
out of war either for religion or any other cause. He was 
the distinct reverse of what a Hohenzollern is apt to be. 

It was on October 30, 1611, that Charles IX. died. As a 
matter of precedent, Gustavus Adolphus could not ascend 
the throne until he was twenty-four years old. But so excep- 
tional were the circumstances surrounding Sweden that within 
two months, on December 17, 1611, the ministry, to whom, 
as a species of regency, Charles had confided Gustavus and 
the welfare of Sweden, clad the seventeen-year-old prince in 
the fullest power as king ; the people accepted him as such ; 
and during his twenty-one years' reign, no Swedish subject 
ever regretted this action. Gustavus chose Axel Oxenstiern, 
himself only twenty-eight years old, as prime minister, and 
during life was devoted to him as one of the best of his 
statesmen and generals. Oxenstiern was as prudent and calm 
as Gustavus was impetuous and high-strung. The two, with 
a friendship so unusual between king and minister, could not 
have been better matched. The qualities of each were a com- 
plement of those of the other. It seems strange enough that 
these two men, whose united ages were but forty-five years, 
should have thus set forth on so gigantic an undertaking. 

Few young monarchs have ever been so harassed on taking 
up the reins of government. Gustavus' situation recalls for- 
cibly that of Alexander. Not only was there great distress 
in many parts of Sweden, not only were the finances of the 
country on a questionable basis, but Sweden was actually at 
war with Denmark, Russia and Poland ; and these countries 
were apt to hold the young king cheap. 

It was manifest that Gustavus could not cope with all 



74 A NEW METHOD. 

these powers at once ; that his only safety lay in finishing, if 
possible, the war with each one singly. The conflict with 
Denmark was the most pressing; the others were all but 
dormant, and could be staved off for a season. 

Christian had begun the war in April, and within two 
months had appeared before and captured Kalmar, and 
greatly strengthened its works. The fortress of Elfsborg 
was also in the possession of the Danes, and the young king 
foresaw that to attempt their recapture would involve more 
time than he had at command. He determined on an incur- 
sion into Danish territory, as an easier means of accomplish- 
ing his object, and in 1612, leaving a force in the vicinity of 
Elfsborg to prevent further aggression by the Danes from 
that quarter, he marched with the bulk of his army into 
Schonen, where Christian had stationed a detachment. 

According to the military art of the day, this was an 
unusual if not unwise proceeding. To undertake a sharp 
offensive on one point of the theatre of war as a defensive 
measure to another part, simple as the problem is, would 
never have occurred to the average general of the early 
seventeenth century. But Gustavus had not studied the lives 
of great captains in vain. Convinced that he was right in 
his theory, he followed up his movement by besieging Hel- 
singborg. The plan should have succeeded, but the Danes, 
with a sudden onslaught on his army, placed him in grave 
danger, and forced him to raise the siege. This failure nei- 
ther discouraged the young king nor drove him from his pur- 
pose. Its effect was the reverse ; his mood was elasticity 
itself, and he determined on an irruption into Norway ; but 
this too proved fruitless, and despite good calculation the 
whole campaign came to naught. 

A severer test of Gustavus' character and ability could 
scarcely have been made. No doubt there were many innuen- 



GUSTAVUS UNDER FAILURE. 75 

does by the wiseacres of broken maxims of the science of 
war ; such a failure would have drawn the temper of most 
men. But like Frederick after Mollwitz, the king only saw 
the clearer and felt the more reliant ; and the operations, 
though unsuccessful, go to show that the bent of the future 
great warrior's mind had already grown beyond the formal 
limitations of the military art of his century. 

One incident in the campaign came close to putting a term 
to the king's career. In a battle on the ice on the lake of 
Widsjb, he and his horse fell through, and he was with diffi- 
culty rescued. Military manoeuvres on the ice, or the engulf- 
ing of many men, are no rarities in these northern latitudes. 
This was but one of a series of accidents and wounds, gener- 
ally brought on by the king's inordinately reckless gallantry. 
He is the captain who most resembles Alexander in the 
Homeric quality of his courage. He could not keep out of 
the fray. 

Meanwhile the Danes, under personal command of Chris- 
tian, prepared an expedition against Elfsnabben and Jonko- 
ping. The latter was a border fortress, and both were impor- 
tant places from a military standpoint, to hold which would 
give the Danes a secondary base for the invasion of the inte- 
rior of Sweden. Gustavus had taken up a position near by, 
to forestall any such movement, but was, both by land and 
sea, distinctly weaker than the enemy. Harboring small 
respect for his youthful opponent, Christian made bold to 
push for Stockholm, hoping to capture it out of hand during 
the absence of the king. He had already reached Waxholm, 
within a half dozen miles of the capital, when Gustavus, 
catching the alarm, returned at the head of a small force, 
roused and armed all the able-bodied population, and march- 
ing boldly out to meet Christian at Waxholm, compelled him 
to withdraw. 



76 DANISH PEACE. 

Disappointed in the results of this unimportant campaign, 
and under the influence of England, Christian, who utterly- 
lacked the moral equipment of Gustavus, and who was more- 
over held much in check by his nobles, a turbulent, unreason- 
able set of men, now expressed his willingness to make peace. 
Gustavus, who was a soldier to his finger-tips, felt bitterly 
the necessity of ending by negotiation a first war which he 
would fain have ended by the sword ; but he was glad to be 
rid at any price of his nearest and most dangerous enemy, 
and Christian, at the peace of Knarod, January 19, 1613, 
yielded up Kalmar, and later Elfsborg and his other con- 
quests, on payment by Sweden of an indemnity of a million 
rix thaler, about eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 
This was a heavy tax for so small and poor a country, but 
the peace was made with honor, and was abundantly worth 
thrice the money. A special tax was imposed for the ransom 
of Elfsborg, and Swedish territory was left intact. 

No sooner rid of Denmark than Gustavus turned to the 
Russian question. His father had already conquered Ingria 
and Carelia. His old tutor, de la Gardie, the general there 
in command, had won a reputation for energy and fair mili- 
tary skill. Gustavus' younger brother, Charles Philip, had 
some time before been selected as a candidate for the Rus- 
sian throne, which at this time was a shuttlecock between 
several rival factions, but Charles IX. had not approved the 
act, and Gustavus now declined to assert the claim by arms. 
His sole purpose was to prevent the king of Poland from 
putting on the throne a tool of his own. Nor did he in 1613 
consider himself quite ready to undertake so extensive an 
affair ; for the Danish war had delayed his preparations. 

It was at this time that Gustavus' love affair with the 
beautiful young Countess von Brahe occurred, and it has been 
said that this too contributed to his delays. At all events, 



GUSTAVUS ATTACKS RUSSIA. 77 

nothing was accomplished until the next year, 1614, by which 
time he had fully completed his equipment for a Russian 
campaign. 

Michael Feodorovitch, the ancestor of the Romanoffs, had 
been elected czar ; but de la Gardie, on behalf of Sweden, 
protested against the choice, for the general still favored the 
pretensions of his young prince. Though Gustavus' object 
was more an effort to strengthen the grasp of Sweden on the 
Baltic than to push his brother's claims, he was none the less 
keenly bent on war. After some effort, he managed to patch 
up a two years' truce with Poland, and sent Charles Philip 
with troops to Wiborg, in the Swedish province of Finland, 
to protect it from invasion. Some exchanges had already 
taken place between de la Gardie and the Russians, and the 
war was fairly inaugurated. 

In 1615 the young monarch inarched with an army from 
Finland into Ingria, past the present site of St. Peters- 
burg, took Angdov by storm, conquered the whole province, 
besieged Pleskov, which was strongly fortified, and, finally 
successful in reducing it, made proposals of peace through 
the mediation of Great Britain. But these were rejected. 
In this campaign de la Gardie was the young king's second 
in command, and his teacher in the art, as he had been his 
tutor in the science, of war. He was to Gustavus what old 
Schwerin was to Frederick, or Parmenio to Alexander. 
But Gustavus himself made good use of his experience. 
Like these other great captains, from the start he over- 
shadowed his pedagogue, and laid the first foundations of 
Swedish discipline. In lieu of the fearful acts of violence 
which accompanied the raising and the progress of any army 
of that day, all was order and quiet system. Even the Rus- 
sians acknowledged that the behavior of the Swedes was 
vastly better than that of their own troops in their own land. 



78 A WELL-BEHAVED ARMY. 

Every one who placed himself under Swedish protection was 
in fact protected ; the army was fed by contributions regularly 
levied and paid for ; plundering by individuals was punished 
by death. What the regulations prescribed from the cabinet 
was actually carried out on the field. The reputation of the 
young king began to spread all over Europe. The one man 
who gauged Gustavus accurately was Wallenstein, though he 
would allow him no ability as compared with himself. " By 
all means help Sigismund to crush him," said he at a later 
day. " He is a worse foe than ever was the Turk." 

Gustavus was early approached to take part with the Prot- 
estants of Germany, where the wise foresaw the bitter strug- 
gle which promised to break out. An envoy from the Uni- 
versity of Heidelberg came to beg him to act as mediator 
between the Lutherans and the Calvinists ; and Landgrave 
Moritz of Hesse asked him to join a Protestant alliance for 
mutual protection. But while the young monarch watched 
events with a keen eye, he wisely refrained from any under- 
taking which might interfere with his activity against his 
hereditary enemies, and especially Sigismund. He kept on 
good terms with Christian, who, though he was often a cause 
of grave anxiety, never again overtly attacked Sweden, but 
with fair honesty held to the " brotherly compact " he had 
sworn with Gustavus over his wine ; and a truce was made 
with Russia looking towards a peace. The year 1616 was 
spent in Finland, in building up this province, much exhausted 
with the burdens of war ; and by the treaty of Stolbowa, 
February 27, 1617, Russia, hard pressed between Sweden and 
Poland, definitely ceded to Sweden the provinces of Ingria 
and Carelia, with the fortresses of Kexholm, Noteborg, Ivan- 
gorod, Janra and Koporie, and paid over a considerable sum 
of money. 



VII. 

THE POLISH WAES. 1617-1625. 

Having vainly striven to make peace with Poland, and having secured only 
a truce, Gustavus set to work to carry out his projected army changes, and at 
intervals traveled in Germany. In 1620 he married the sister of the elector of 
Brandenburg. At the end of the Polish truce, in 1621, he sailed with a fleet to 
Livonia, and laid siege to Riga. Poland was harassed by the Turks, and though 
the siege was difficult, Piga fell in September, and the king occupied Courland. 
Thus hemmed in, Sigismund made a fresh truce, which, with one or two inter- 
ruptions, lasted till 1625. The Polish king was under the control of the Jesuits 
and of the emperor, and would not agree to a permanent peace, looking on 
Gustavus as illegitimately king. The intervals made by the several truces gave 
Sweden leisure to establish herself on a sound financial and military basis, one 
which for her size was exceptional ; and estates, people and king all worked in 
hearty harmony. 

Having happily settled the differences with Denmark and 
Russia, Gustavus strove to transform into a permanent peace 
his two years' truce with Sigismund ; but his best efforts pro- 
duced no effect on this fanatic. Sigismund plotted in every 
conceivable manner against the country of his birth ; and that 
war must eventuate was not doubtful. But circumstances 
delayed the crisis. The truce, already several times extended, 
was again in 1618, and very fortunately for Sweden, renewed 
by Sigismund, owing to the other complications of Poland, — 
mainly the invasion of the southern part of that kingdom by 
Bethlen Gabor, prince of Transylvania, — and through the 
mediation of King Christian. This aid was a first-fruit of 
the peace Gustavus had made with Denmark, and afforded 
the young monarch the leisure to carry out the changes in 



80 GUSTAVUS MARRIES. 

discipline and tactics which he had already so auspiciously 
begun. 

During 1619 and 1620, at intervals in this work, Gustavus 
traveled, generally incognito, through a part of western 
Europe. Shortly after his accession — as already mentioned 
— he had had a passionate attachment for a beautiful young 
lady of the Swedish court, Countess Ebba von Brahe (who 
used, by the way, to accompany the king's playing of the 
flute, on which it is hoped that he was a better performer 
than that other great captain and petty musician of Sans 
Souci) ; and though his devotion was entirely honorable, the 
queen-mother contrived to break up his purpose of sharing 
his throne with the lady. In this connection it may be noted 
that there is but one record of immorality against Gustavus. 
He had by a Dutch lady a natural son, born in 1616, who, at 
Liitzen, won his spurs on the field where his father fell. In 
an age of sexual laxity, this was a clean record. It was polit- 
ically essential that Gustavus should wed ; Sweden must 
have an heir, and after a trip to Berlin as Captain Gars 
(Gustavus Adolphus Bex Sueciae) he married the sister of 
the young elector of Brandenburg. From this alliance the 
Swedish Estates were warranted in hoping much ; for Bran- 
denburg was able to help in the complicated business with 
Poland. During this period of travel Gustavus' letters show 
that his thoughts were never away from home, nor his activity 
less in testing all the new things he saw which might con- 
tribute to the perfection of his army or the building up of 
Sweden. He journeyed as far as Heidelberg ; the cultivated 
beauties of the Palatinate must have struck him as a sin- 
gular contrast to his own rugged plains ; and what he learned 
of places and people enabled him the better to understand 
the religious struggle which had already been inaugurated, 
and in which he was destined to bear the giant's part. 



POLISH WAR. 81 

The Thirty Years' War was already two years old, and 
terror reigned in many parts of Germany. Gustavus foresaw 
that Sweden, though geographically removed from the scene 
of conflict, would sooner or later be drawn into the vortex ; 
and in 1621 he sought once more to renew the truce with 
Poland, but in vain. Sigismund, under the political control 
of his relative the emperor, and under the religious control of 
the Jesuits, then the growing power of the Roman Church, 
could not be influenced, especially as a fourteen years' truce 
which he had just concluded with Russia saved him harmless 
from danger in that quarter. War supervened, but Sweden 
was in every sense more ready than ever before, and people 
and ministry alike sustained their young monarch with hearty 
good will. 

If war it must be, no better time could perhaps have been 
chosen for Sweden. During the five years' respite Gustavus 
had organized both her finances and her troops. Taxes had 
been carefully laid, and the raising of men for the army had 
been systematically based on a tenure of land which equalized 
the burdens. The priests from the pulpit preached the war, 
the nobility was encouraged to yield its best efforts to the 
cause, and the soldier was given an honorable position in 
society. The officer who bore him well was considered the 
equal of the noble, and the aristocracy was thus merged into 
the military scheme. For the first time in modern days there 
arose a new form of government, — the military monarchy. 
East Gothland had fallen to the crown on the death of Gus- 
tavus' cousin John, diminishing the chances of internal strife : 
and his marriage, it was thought, had given him a political 
foothold in Germany despite the opposition of Poland. 

As a first act in the opening of the campaign of 1621, 
Gustavus set out to conquer Livonia, to which the Swedisli 
royal family ever since King Eric's time had some preten- 



82 



RIGA. 



sions, though pretensions of this kind, in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, were wont to have a slender basis. 
With a fleet of one hundred and fifty-eight vessels, the king 
landed twenty-four thousand men, mostly infantry, at the 
mouth of the Dwina River, took the fort commanding it, and 
opened the siege of Riga on August 13. In this and his 
future Polish wars Gustavus had the assistance of his later 
so celebrated generals, Horn, Bauer, Torstenson and Wrangel. 
The siege of this important city proved difficult. It was 
strong, contained a goodly garrison, and, though on the score 
of religion Livonia was not warmly attached to Sigismund, 
the city had a public-spirited population. The Poles were 
noted for stout, if spasmodic, fighting. Luckily for Gustavus, 

Sigismund was unable to send re- 
inforcements to Riga because of 
an inroad of three hundred thou- 
sand Turks, the result of his de- 
feat at Jassy the year before ; and 
no imperial aid was forthcoming. 
The siege was vigorously pushed ; 
a line of contravallation was built, 
and the army divided into four 
unequal corps according to the 
lay of the land. The king was 
personally active in every step of 
the operation. While insisting 
on discipline unknown at that 
day, he encouraged the men by 
his presence and enthusiasm, and afforded them the exam- 
ple of what a commander-in-chief should be. He had the 
true soldier's way of winning their love. Gustavus thrice 
offered terms to the garrison before opening a bombard- 
ment, and a belated army of relief, ten thousand strong, 




Riga. 



COURLAND INVADED. 83 

under Prince Radziwill, was attacked and beaten. Two of 
the outer works, a redoubt and a half moon, were taken by 
storm ; but two other assaults were driven back, and Horn 
and Baner both wounded. Mining was then resorted to in 
September ; a gallery of the king's own invention was laid on 
to cross the wet ditch ; this was partly filled up, and every- 
thing was prepared for an assault in force upon the breaches 
opened. Annoyed at the stubborn defense, the king had 
determined to explode all the mines at once, to storm the 
place, and give it up to plunder ; but in the six hours' truce 
granted September 16, before the assault should begin, the 
garrison wisely concluded to surrender. The siege had lasted 
four weeks. Well satisfied at the victory, Gustavus treated 
the people of Riga with generosity, and after banishing the 
Jesuits, who had behaved in a peculiarly hostile manner, took 
an oath of fealty from the town. The campaign had opened 
felicitously. 

From Riga Gustavus marched through Courland to Mittau, 
and as a matter of strategic safety, placed a friendly garrison 
of two thousand men in the town ; for the duke of Courland 
was on terms of amity with Sweden. 

Before moving into Poland, where he hoped to compel a 
peace, the king again approached Sigismund with offers of 
negotiation. Sigismund was only half tractable ; he would 
not conclude peace ; but owing to the trouble which the 
Turks and Tartars were giving him, he did agree to continue 
the truce another year, leaving to the Swedes, as a guaranty, 
the already conquered part of Livonia. Hereupon Gustavus 
evacuated Courland, and returned to Stockholm, late in 1621. 
r ae promise of the campaign had been fulfilled ; but quiet 
as not restored without another warlike incident. 

The king's brother, Charles Philip, died in 1622 ; he him- 
elf had as yet no heir ; and these circumstances renewed the' 



84 DANZIG. 

aspirations of Sigisrnund to the Swedish throne. Nothing 
could better fit into the plans of the Emperor Ferdinand, and 
under the advice of the latter, Sigisrnund began to think of 
carrying the war into Sweden. As Poland had no fleet, Si- 
gisrnund betook himself to the free city of Danzig, hoping to 
build ships in its harbor, a work for which its vast commerce 
and connection with the Hanse towns afforded ample means. 
A less suspicious mind than Gustavus' would have seen no 
harm in this ; but the Swedish king was alert ; towards the 
middle of June, 1622, he appeared before Danzig with a 
strong fleet, and after some negotiation compelled the city to 
bind itself to neutrality. This prompt action led up to the 
proposal of an armistice by Sigisrnund himself, and to a fur- 
ther renewal of the old truce ; whereupon Gustavus returned 
home. Signed in' June, 1622, this truce left Sweden in 
possession of Livonia, and of some places in Courland; it 
was kept up by more or less irregular extensions for three 
years. 

Sigismund's unwillingness to make peace was not unnat- 
ural. The Catholic princes of Germany looked on Protestant 
Gustavus, who came of the junior Vasas, as an usurper of the 
Swedish throne, and would gladly have seen Catholic Sigis- 
rnund back in his place. They feared Gustavus' restless 
ability, and were ready for anything to humble him. The 
Jesuits ceased not to foster the oppression of the Protestants. 
Under their influence, Sigisrnund would not enter into a per- 
manent peace, for that was treason to his religion, while a 
truce was a mere military incident. On the other hand, Gus- 
tavus showed himself at all times ready to make terms with 
Sigisrnund, on the basis of the good of Sweden. His constant 
offers of peace remind one of Caesar's many proposals to 
Pompey. Both Caesar and Gustavus were no doubt honestly 
desirous of peace on terms satisfactory to the cause of each ; 



THE NEW ARMY. 85 

each was careful to place himself on record as a peace-maker, 
though neither would have given up a substantial part of 
what he deemed his rights. Of the two, however, Gustavus 
was by far the more frank and upright in his protestations. 
If ever a man said what he meant and stuck to it, it was the 
king of Sweden ; Csesar veiled his meaning in diction which 
never committed him to any definite action. 

At home Gustavus was sure of his ground. The unity of 
king, ministry and people was in marked contrast to the con- 
dition of any other country of Europe. Scarce a chapter in 
the world's history exhibits affection, confidence and mutual 
helpfulness between prince and people in equal measure. 
The king took no step without consulting the Estates, and 
they and the ministry never failed to sustain him. In the 
new organization of the Swedish army, which, in 1625, he 
more formally undertook, he had the hearty support of all 
classes. Under it, a regular army of eighty thousand men 
was raised, in addition to the equally large militia system 
already adverted to. He was now ready for any war which 
must come, though he felt that he was not yet prepared 
definitively to embrace the cause of his German brother 
Protestants. 




Arquebus. (l(5th Century.) 



VIII. 

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. RELIGIOUS PHASE. 1618-1625. 

The Thirty Years' War originated in the desire of the Catholic princes of 
Germany to prevent the growth of Protestantism, and in the desire of the 
emperor to make his rule a real instead of a nominal one. These two aims so 
lacked consistency that many princes would work for one and not the other. 
There were seven prince-electors who chose the emperor ; there was a German 
Diet, but it did not represent the people. The several potentates were practi- 
cal autocrats ; the Diet was their meeting-place ; only the free cities gov- 
erned themselves. The emperor's power was small; though nominally the 
fountain head, he could enforce his will only by the ban of the empire. The 
two religions were more at odds in temporal than spiritual matters. Much of 
the property of the Catholic bishoprics had been secularized where people had 
adopted the new religion, and the Peace of Augsburg, in 1552, had settled 
questions thus arising. Fifty years later things could not revert to that status, 
and yet the Catholics were bent on recovering, the Protestants on holding, what 
they had since taken. Maximilian of Bavaria was the champion of the Cath- 
olics ; Christian of Anhalt of the Protestants. The Lutherans and Calvinists 
did not act in common ; the leading Protestant princes were not helpful. A 
Protestant Union was formed in 1608 to prevent the Catholics from retaking 
what the Protestants already had ; a Catholic League followed. Though the 
struggle went on, war was not precipitated until 1618, when Bohemia drove 
out her new king, Ferdinand, and the emperor undertook to replace him. In 
1619 Ferdinand himself was elected emperor, Frederick of the Palatinate was 
chosen king of Bohemia, and the war was prosecuted in earnest. There was 
no community of action among the Protestants, and neither party won success 
until, in 1620, Frederick was defeated near Prague by the imperial general 
Tilly, and driven from Bohemia, while Mansfeld and later Christian of Bruns- 
wick, who commanded Protestant armies, were driven up into the Weser 
country. The armies of the day, living by plunder, were barbarous beyond 
telling, and the land suffered much. Tilly kept on, until by 1623 all south 
Germany was reduced, and the emperor resolved on putting down Protestantism 
in north Germany as well. Mansfeld and Brunswick alone stood in the way. 



CAUSES OF WAR. 87 

Though the operations of the Thirty Years' War, prior 
to the entrance on its stage of the great Swede, have little 
value as a military study, a few pages must be devoted to the 
subject to show the desperate situation of the war when Gus- 
tavus finally threw himself into the scale against the empire 
and the persecution of the Protestants. As little time as 
possible will be taken from the more important phases. 

The remote causes of the war were twofold : the purpose 
of the Catholic powers to weld the chains of religion on pro- 
testing Europe ; and the purpose of the emperor to make his 
rule a real instead of a nominal one over entire Germany ; 
for the Hapsburgs had long dreamed of a universal Euro- 
pean empire. These two purposes were inconsistent; they 
could not live together. Potentates who would work faith- 
fully to compass the religious end would sacrifice religion to 
prevent a reestablishment of imperial rule. And it was this 
inconsistency which brought about the eccentricities of the 
war, and lay at the root of the never-ending changes among 
the contestants ; which led Catholic France to subsidize Prot- 
estant Sweden, and prevented Maximilian of Bavaria from 
working kindly under his brother in the faith, the Emperor 
Ferdinand. 

Not but what the Protestants were to blame. The Luther- 
ans and Calvinists were as incapable of continued joint effort, 
as they were intolerant of each other's dogmas ; and their 
quarrels, quite as much as the diverse purposes of the Cath- 
olics, operated to prolong the struggle. It was the knot of 
this imbroglio that Gustavus Adolphus essayed to cut ; and 
implacable as were the contestants, unreasonable as were 
their motives, he succeeded, before his early death, in perma- 
nently preventing the emperor from fettering Protestantism, 
and in giving the death-blow to imperialism. He thwarted 
the realization of both the causal aspirations. The sixteen 



88 THE GERMAN EMPIRE. 

years of awful warfare which succeeded his death were due 
to the shortsightedness and petty jealousies of those who con- 
tinued the struggle in his name, and who during his life had 
worked with reasonable unanimity with or against him. The 
motif of the war was religious toleration ; what Germany 
began, France completed ; but it was Gustavus who made the 
success of France a possible thing. 

There were four phases to the Thirty Years' War: the 
Keligious, the Danish, the Swedish, the French. 

To us English peoples, the construction of the German 
empire in the seventeenth century is an enigma. We hear 
that there was an emperor, and we read of a diet, and it is 
hard to comprehend why the people had no voice in the gov- 
ernment. But they practically had none whatever. The 
land was ruled by a few princes, each possessing within his 
own borders almost absolute power. 

There was a vast number of small principalities, among 
which were seven princes called electors, who, on the death 
of one, chose the succeeding emperor. Three of them were 
religious : the archbishops of Cologne, Trier and Mainz ; 
four of them were temporal : the king of Bohemia, the elec- 
tors of Brandenburg and Saxony and the elector-palatine. 
The emperor was the acknowledged successor of the Roman 
Csesars and of Charles the Great ; but he had no real power, 
except in so far as he was also king of some particular coun- 
try. As emperor he held a mere empty title. He was sup- 
posed to be the source of everything ; from him all holdings 
of kingdoms, principalities and powers were deemed to have 
been derived, but the princes who so held under him resented 
the slightest interference with their acts. 

The Diet was in no sense a popular assembly. Far from 
being a mouthpiece of the people, it did not even represent 
the smaller princes. It was a mere congress of the larger 



CONVENTION OF PASSAU. 89 

autocrats, to arrange their, so to speak, international rights. 
The only power the emperor could exert against a prince 
was to put him to the ban of the empire, a mild species 
of lay excommunication, which hurt him not the least, pro- 
vided he had a good army and a full treasury, and was at 
peace with his neighbors. To be sure, Germany was divided 
into Circles, each of which had an imperial court to decide 
questions between the princes; but the decisions were far 
from being always fair, and yet farther from being generally 
respected. 

The Estates of the empire, some of the princes to wit, 
met in the Diet in three Houses. The electors, excepting 
the king of Bohemia, who only voted in the election of an 
emperor, formed the first ; the second contained a number of 
smaller princes, ecclesiastical and lay j the third, deemed an 
inferior body, was filled by representatives of the free cities. 
Except for the latter, the people was utterly without repre- 
sentation. Nothing better proves this than the fact that at 
the beginning of the seventeenth century the vast majority 
(stated at ninety per cent.) of the population of Germany 
was Protestant, while the Diet was opposed to Protestantism ; 
and the further fact that most of the lay princes, members of 
the Diet, as individuals sustained the new religion, if they did 
not actually profess it. This condition of affairs was fraught 
with, and naturally resulted in, war. 

Under Charles V., the Convention of Passau, in 1552, led 
to the Peace of Augsburg, which attempted to settle the many 
vexed questions arising from the very natural seizure of Cath- 
olic Church property in entirely Protestant countries ; but the 
Augsburg terms provided nothing for the future, and only 
Lutheranism, not Calvinism, was recognized. Meanwhile, the 
new religion was growing, and matters coidd not practically 
be measured by a standard fixed at any given time. There 



90 RELIGIOUS QUARRELS. 

were further seizures of ecclesiastical property and rifling of 
monasteries ; and eight of the great northern bishoprics 
became Protestant. The bishop, as he was still called, was 
in reality only a prince who sometimes spoke of himself as 
Administrator. So things went on for a generation or more. 

The Protestants did not grow in wisdom as they grew in 
stature. Theological quarrels arose among them, which gave 
the Jesuits, as being all of one mind, a fair claim to a hear- 
ing ; and finally the Catholics began once more to gain 
ground. The two main questions in dispute were the rights 
of the Protestant administrators, and the status of the secu- 
larized lands. At the end of the century the Catholics insisted 
on going back to the Augsburg basis of 1552 ; the Protestants 
desired to modify matters to suit the conditions of the day. 
The disputes waxed hotter, but there appears to have been 
more hostility manifested by the princes than the people. As 
a rule, the Catholic and Protestant populations tolerated each 
other fairly well. 

All this grew worse and worse. Maximilian of Bavaria 
was the champion of the Catholics ; Christian of Anhalt, a 
Calvinist, was the leader of the Protestants ; John George, 
elector of Saxony, a Lutheran, played the part of peace- 
maker. 

Maximilian was an able man with an ample treasury and a 
good army. He held to the Peace of Augsburg as the only 
true measure of values, and to conform to this meant to uproot 
all that had been done in more than fifty years. The Prot- 
estant princes found the ownership of the ancient Catholic 
lands altogether too convenient to be given up ; and their 
faith agreed with their liking. The most unprotected part of 
Protestantism was in the south German states, which lay 
between Catholic Bavaria and the bishoprics of Bamberg and 
Wiirzburg on the one side, and those of Worms and Speyer, 



PROTESTANT UNION. 



91 



the electorates on the Rhine and the Spanish possessions on 
the other. These south German Protestants were mainly Cal- 
vinists, as their brethren in the north were mostly Lutherans. 
Christian of Anhalt was a stanch Calvinist, and an able 
politician, in fact too much of a diplomat. Maximilian wisely 
armed ; Christian sought to accomplish results by finesse. 
Every one foresaw an irrepressible conflict. 




The Bohemian Revolt. 



Finally, in 1607, a religious riot in Donauworth induced 
the emperor, with only a show of trial, to put it to the ban, 
and Maximilian was appointed to execute the decree, which 
he did with inexcusable rigor. At this, the free cities of the 
south — Niirnberg, Ulm and Strasburg — took alarm, and in 
1608 a Protestant Union, under the leadership of Christian 
(and incidentally of Frederick of the Palatinate), was formed 
for mutual defense. To it belonged Hesse-Cassel, Wiirtem- 



92 CATHOLIC LEAGUE. 

bei'g, Baden-Duiiach and many of the free towns ; Saxony 
and Hesse-Darmstadt refused to join ; Brandenburg, Meck- 
lenburg, Pomerania and Brunswick - Luneburg remained 
neutral. The Union in the same year was followed by the 
creation of a Catholic League under Maximilian, which was 
joined by nearly all the princes of south Germany, the Main 
and lower Rhine ; but the emperor took no part in it. The 
two parties — Union and League — stood ready for war, and 
succeeding conventions and diets effected nothing toward 
peace. John George of Saxony, who was a good sportsman 
and a deep drinker rather than a wise ruler, despite his 
extensive power and his good intentions, had not the person- 
ality to enforce his moderate views, and the seething of the 
trouble went on. It is fruitless to follow all the phases of 
the singular struggle ; but it never ceased until finally, in 
1618, it broke out into open war. 

In 1611 Rudolph, king of Bohemia, who was also archduke 
of Austria and German emperor, was driven from the throne 
of Bohemia by his brother Matthias, who next year, on 
Rudolph's death, was elected emperor. The Bohemians had 
extorted from Rudolph a sort of imperial charter for freedom 
of conscience. This charter Matthias sought to undermine, 
and in the Bohemian Diet of 1617, the Estates were per- 
suaded into acknowledging Matthias' cousin, Catholic Fer- 
dinand of Styria, as hereditary king of a throne which had 
always been elective. Thus the House of Austria fastened 
its talons upon Bohemia, and shortly, as was to be expected, 
the persecutions of the Protestants became more marked. 

In 1618 the Bohemians rose under Count Henry of Thurn, 
the new king was deposed, his regents expelled in the famous 
defenestration of Prague, the Jesuits were driven from the 
land, and thirty directors were chosen who appealed for help 
to their brother Protestants. John George of Saxony refused 



THE WAR OPENS. 93 

any except such aid as would reconcile them to the empire, 
but Frederick of the Palatinate took up their cause in theory. 
The Protestants in Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia and Upper 
Austria began to arm. Every one was expecting a struggle 
and sought to be ready. The emperor was fairly driven into 
war ; but his low treasury and internal troubles prepared for 
him a difficult task. 

Bohemia raised thirty thousand men. Count Mansfeld, an 
able officer but distinctly a soldier of fortune, just at the end 
of his service under the duke of Savoy, joined the Bohemians 
with a small division ; Silesia and Brunswick sent troops. 
Neutral Brandenburg and Saxe- Weimar promised secret aid, 
and other countries, notably Holland, money. Negative assist- 
ance in the way of an attack on Austria was hoped from 
Protestant Bethlen Gabor, and even from the Turks. 

Three strong places in Bohemia had remained true to the 
emperor : Catholic Pilsen, Budweis and Krummau. Instead 
of advancing at once on the emperor, Counts Thurn and 
Mansfeld engaged in a siege of these fortresses, and Pilsen 
was actually taken. The emperor sent against them small 
armies under Dampierre and Bouquoi, the latter a general 
educated in the best school of that day, the Netherlands ; but 
the operations of 1618 were trivial, and the Bohemian Diet, 
which had pulled down its king, showed no sign of replacing 
him by any effective government. The Protestant Union 
naturally promised its aid ; but the disagreements between its 
members made the assistance of questionable utility to the 
Bohemians. 

The succeeding winter was made noteworthy by the begin- 
ning of depredations on the part of the unfed, unpaid troops, 
of license which was the disgraceful characteristic of the 
Thirty Years' War, and which ended by transforming Ger- 
many into a desert and retarding her progress a hundred years. 



94 THE BOHEMIANS UNWISE. 

In 1619 Matthias died, and in August Ferdinand II., the 
deposed king of Bohemia, was elected. Moravia and Silesia 
had openly revolted. Mansf eld remained during the year in 
Bohemia to watch Bouquoi. Thurn marched through Mora- 
via on Vienna, and actually reached and cannonaded the city. 
Almost any man but Ferdinand would have succumbed ; but 
the future emperor was made of iron, and luckily for him 
Dampierre turned to help Vienna and drove Thurn away, 
while Bouquoi faced Mansfeld and beat him in a battle near 
Prague. Thurn returned to Bohemia, and Bouquoi took to 
the defensive ; Dampierre made an unsuccessful foray into 
Moravia. None of these operations had any result. 

Never was a better chance for independence thrown away. 
Had the joint forces of Bohemia and its allies been used in 
one body, they coidd at this moment have secured anything 
at the gates of Vienna ; but the Bohemians resorted to polit- 
ical means in lieu of pushing the war with military vigor. 
They chose as their king Frederick of the Palatinate, who 
was son-in-law of James of England, and who, they believed, 
possessed friends of the helpful sort. Their calculations 
proved false. Frederick — as king of Bohemia and elector- 
palatine — would become the strongest prince in Germany, 
possessing two out of the seven electoral votes, a fact which 
aroused the keenest jealousy of every other potentate, espe- 
cially John George, and even stirred up the Union ; while, on 
the other hand, King James did naught to aid his kinsman. 
The Bohemians made a treaty with Bethlen Gabor, though 
the latter was too busy in seeking to tear Hungary from the 
emperor's grasp to be more than an indirect ally ; and they 
appealed to Gustavus for assistance. Bouquoi, with twelve 
thousand men, retired to the imperial capital, and established 
a camp on the left bank of the Danube, below Vienna, back- 
ing on the river, a position curiously considered by the mili- 



JAN TZERKLAS. 



95 



tary men of that time the strongest a general could hold. 
Thurn with ten thousand men joined Bethlen Gabor with 
sixteen thousand ; the two essayed in vain to drive out Bou- 
quoi, and at last, wearied with winter campaigning, Bethlen 
Gabor made a separate peace with the emperor, and Thurn 
was compelled to retire. His several advances on Vienna, 
too much in detail, had borne 
no fruit. But they had been 
brilliantly conceived. 

These two years, neglected 
by Bohemia, enabled the em- 
peror to conduct a strong offen- 
sive in 1620. He had utilized 
his time by inducing jealous 
Saxony to side against Freder- 
ick; by inciting Bavaria and 
Spain to activity ; and by 
frightening the Union into 
withdrawing its aid from the 
new king of Bohemia, so as to defend itself. The Lower 
Palatinate was soon threatened by twenty thousand men under 
the Spanish general Spinola, who marched up the Rhine from 
the Netherlands to Mainz, and, despite the Union, reduced all 
the Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine ; while Max- 
imilian mobilized the Bavarian troops, and the Catholic 
League collected an army at Donauworth. The Bohemians 
were inexpertly led by Christian of Anhalt, who was barely 
able to hold them together. The duke of Bavaria, whose 
general-in-chief was the celebrated Count Tilly, a Walloon, 
Jan Tzerklas by name, reduced the Protestants of Upper 
Austria in August, joined Bouquoi's forces, and with fifty 
thousand men marched into Bohemia. Frederick, whose 
friends at the first sign of danger all seemed to forsake him, 




Tilly. 



96 " WHITE HILL." 

withdrew with his army towards Mansfeld at Pilsen. The 
Bohemian armies were ill supplied, suffered from disease, 
had no discipline, and plundered right and left. Frederick 
and Mansfeld did not agree. The latter remained in Pilsen, 
and Frederick retired towards Prague. Tilly, whose army 
was equally ill behaved and ill supplied, followed Frederick 
sharply, and on November 8, 1620, at the battle of the 
"White Hill, near Prague, utterly defeated him. Frederick 
fled the country, and was put to the ban of the empire. The 
operation on the part of Tilly deserves praise. He had 
profited by his opponent's weakness. 

Bohemia was soon subjugated. Mansfeld held Pilsen some 
time, but eventually retired to the Upper Palatinate. The 
land was punished in a frightful manner, according to the 
fanatical method of the day. The elector of Saxony, mean- 
while, reduced Silesia, and was allowed to annex Lusatia as 
his reward. John George was a peace-maker, or at least he 
was consistent in so proclaiming himself, but he was always 
ready to earn a new strip of territory, and he kept his eye on 
the main chance. 

In 1621 the emperor set himself to reduce the Palatinate ; 
Frederick would not sue for amnesty. Spinola had already 
put his foot on the Lower Palatinate, and was visiting the 
land with the wonted atrocities. Hesse-Cassel, Strasburg, 
Ulm and Niirnberg made terms. England, the Netherlands, 
Denmark and Switzerland sought to encourage the Union to 
better efforts, but this body lacked a capable leader whose 
hands were free, and it broke up in April. Mansfeld en- 
deavored to defend the Upper Palatinate for Frederick, but 
his troops were if anything more lawless than the enemy's, 
and it was well that he was eventually forced to retire. 

It is impossible to describe the barbarity of these armies. 
The soldier was a professional who hired himself to the gen- 



MANSFELD. 



97 



eral promising the greatest chance of plunder, and there was 
not a vice or a brutality from which he shrank, even among 
friends, while in the enemy's country, murder, rapine and 
incendiarism were the rule of every day. " Do you think my 
men are nuns? " asked Tilly, in answer to complaints of ruf- 
fianism; and yet Tilly's army was comparatively well in hand. 
Neither man, woman nor child escaped the ruthless savagery 
of the soldier of the Thirty Years' War, — excepting always 
those under the control of Gustavus Adolphus. And such sol- 
diers were all the less efficient, for their habits clashed with 
every military plan ; armies moved to seek plunder, not suc- 
cess. Yet such was the method of raising and maintaining 
troops that it was deemed a matter of course that these things 
should be. The effect on the country or on the army was not 
considered. 

From the Upper, Mansfeld marched to the Lower Palati- 
nate, where he won some slight 
successes against Spinola, and 
then sat down in Hagenau, 
watching Tilly on the Neckar, 
and Spinola on the Main. 
Meanwhile, Bethlen Gabor 
again appeared on the scene. 
Bouquoi had been killed, and 
his army was in full retreat. 
If Frederick was in desperate 
straits, Ferdinand's position 
was far from easy. 

Now came an accession of 
forces for the Protestants. 

Early in May, 1622, Christian of Brunswick, an adventurer 
almost as desperate as Mansfeld, starting from the north, and 
the margrave of Baden-Durlach from the south, each with 




Tilly's Manoeuvres. 



98 TILLY'S MANCEUVRES. 

twenty thousand men, marched to join Mansfeld, who crossed 
the Rhine, and after meeting the margrave at Wiesloch, de- 
feated Tilly in an ambush. But, wasting his time, he allowed 
Tilly to join the Spanish forces, and to march on the mar- 
grave, who had again separated from him. Falling on him 
at Wimpfen on May 6, before Mansfeld could come up, Tilly 
defeated him, meanwhile holding Brunswick in check by a 
detachment of Spinola's troops borrowed for the occasion. 
On these being later withdrawn, Brunswick marched down 
to the Main country to join Mansfeld. But Tilly caught him 
crossing the river at Hbchst June 20, attacked him in the 
rear, and badly cut him up. Heidelberg, Mannheim and 
Frankenthal now easily fell to Tilly. 

Space forbids us to detail this, as well as many other inter- 
esting operations. Tilly had manoeuvred skillfully. By keep- 
ing in one body he had prevented the junction of three armies 
of twenty thousand men each, and beaten them in detail, by a 
set of manoeuvres which abundantly deserve study. They are 
one of the early instances of clever strategic work following 
upon the blank page of the Middle Ages. And yet Tilly 
was not usually fertile in strategic manoeuvres. Mansfeld 
and Brunswick were finally driven out of the Lower Palati- 
nate, passed through and devastated Alsace and Lorraine, 
and retired to Metz ; and from thence, after a brush with the 
Spanish troops, Mansfeld, with his army, entered the service 
of the Netherlands. 

Claiming his reward for Tilly's accomplishment, Maxi- 
milian was made elector, and given the Upper Palatinate. 
Emboldened by success, the emperor resolved to carry the 
war to the north against the dukes of Mecklenburg, Bruns- 
wick and Pomerania. He had reason for congratulation. 

The war was thus transferred to the Weser. Frederick 
had dismissed Mansfeld and Brunswick from his employ ; 



TILLY DEFEATS MANSFELD. 99 

but far from disbanding their forces, these generals foresaw 
means of subsistence and renown in marching their armies 
to another section. There was nothing they so little desired 
as peace. Each was fighting, not for Protestantism, but for 
himself. North Germany was as much opposed to them as 
it was to Tilly. If Mansfeld and Brunswick had not moved 
north, it is improbable that the emperor would have sent 
Tilly beyond the Palatinate ; some kind of a peace would 
have been patched up. But these free lances kept about 
their work, and the men who were supposed to be the cham- 
pions of the new faith grew to be its most intolerable foes. 

Mansfield, in 1623, devastated the Catholic holdings on 
the left bank of the Rhine with his Netherlands troops, while 
Brunswick lay beyond the "Werra with some twenty-five 
thousand Dutch and north Germans, near Gottingen. Tilly 
moved upon him, crossed the river in his front, and sent a 
detachment around his left wing. This time, however, the 
veteran counted without his host. Brunswick fell succes- 
sively on each part of Tilly's army, and beat it singly. But 
losing part of his forces by disbandment, he fell back to join 
Mansfeld. Tilly followed, and attacking him August 6 at 
Stadtlohn, west of Miinster, on the Ems, defeated him with 
grievous loss. Only six thousand men out of twenty thou- 
sand succeeded in joining Mansfeld. No further operations 
were undertaken this year, but all the armies went into win- 
ter-quarters, accompanied by the usual course of atrocious 
devastation of the countries they occupied. 



^3L 



Halberd with Gun. (16th Century.) 



IX. 

THE DANISH PERIOD. 1625-1630. 

GuSTAvas had repeatedly been appealed to by the German Protestants for 
aid; but his Polish wars kept hini too busy to respond. Recognizing that 
eventually Sweden would be involved, he expected to cooperate, but in his own 
fashion. France, England and Holland, all anti-Hapsburg, had been irregu- 
larly furnishing funds to the Protestant armies, but lacking a worthy leader, 
there was no consistent action. In 1625 Gustavus offered to undertake the war 
on certain distinct terms ; but Christian of Denmark underbid him, and Eng- 
land made a treaty with Christian, under whom Brunswick and Mansfeld were 
to serve. Thus began the Danish phase. To oppose Christian was Tilly, the 
Bavarian general ; and the celebrated Wallenstein was commissioned by the 
emperor to raise an army. The two had seventy thousand men to Christian's 
sixty thousand. Living by plunder, all these armies weighed heavily on the 
land. While Tilly advanced against Christian, Wallenstein defeated Mansfeld 
at the Dessau bridge ; but he then weakly followed when Mansfeld pushed south 
to join Bethlen Gabor in Transylvania, thus wasting the campaign. Mansf eld's 
army was eventually disbanded, and Wallenstein returned. Meanwhile Tilly 
defeated Christian at Lutter in 1626, and in 1627 drove him well back into 
Holstein. Wallenstein now arrived, took the reins, and pushed Christian into 
the Danish islands. All Germany was the emperor's, save the free cities 
and Stralsund ; but from this latter place, in 1628, Wallenstein, after a long 
siege and heavy loss, was driven back. King Christian sued for peace, and in 
1629 was let off on easy terms, so that Wallenstein might devote himself to 
Gustavus, who was shortly to come upon the scene. The war had been re- 
morselessly conducted, and without broad method. Results had been obtained 
rather from weak opposition than by able measures. 

To detail the complicated political and religious events of 
the Thirty Years' War is without the scope of the present 
work ; nor can we dwell on its early military manoeuvres. 
With the exception of a few of Tilly's and Wallenstein's, 
the marches and countermarches of the plundering hordes 



EFFECT ON SWEDEN. 101 

have no value ; the military history of Gustavus, and of a 
few great captains who succeeded him, claims our attention. 

During all this seething of the German imbroglio, Sweden 
was engaged on other business. As a strong Protestant, Gus- 
tavus was ambitious to help his downtrodden brethren of the 
faith ; but he was a stronger Swede, and he looked primarily 
to the welfare of his fatherland. That this welfare was 
bound up in its religion, Gustavus had the intelligence to see, 
as his grandfather, the great Gustavus I., had seen ; that the 
European conflict could be settled only by the sword and 
by means of strange political alliances ; that, unless Sweden 
soon took an active part in the struggle she would eventually 
be passively crushed : all this was plain to him, and the 
young king was ready to act so soon as the time was ripe. 
But though hot-headed in the fray, though embracing with 
exceptional fervor a cause he had once joined, Gustavus was 
cool and dispassionate, prudent and calculating, in the cabi- 
net. True Swedish polity would not permit him to under- 
take a work which might lay him open to the treachery of 
Sigismund, which might again bring Sweden under the dicta- 
tion of Poland ; nor could he put his hand to so great a busi- 
ness unless he was more amply equipped with the sinews of 
war than his own poor land could furnish. In the work to 
be done he was willing to join the man to whom public opin- 
ion was now pointing, King Christian of Denmark, or he was 
ready to see the latter undertake it single-handed. But of 
first importance to him was peace or a lasting truce with 
Poland ; Gustavus would not needlessly sacrifice Sweden 
upon the altar even of Protestantism ; she must be placed 
beyond danger from outside foes ; and such a peace or truce 
Gustavus set himself resolutely to conquer. Not closing 
his eyes to the suffering in Germany, he limited his action 
to his manifest capacity. 



102 GUSTAVUS' PLAN. 

There was, moreover, a feeling in Gustavus' mind, that, in 
a military sense, he could best aid the Protestant cause by an 
advance upon the emperor's dominions through Silesia, — 
by reaching out towards Bethlen Gabor, who had married 
the sister of his queen, and was one of his devout admirers. 
This plan likewise necessitated a previous conquest or neu- 
tralization of Poland, some place near which would then 
serve as a base of operations. 

This idea was in fact worked out from the then standpoint 
in much detail. While Christian of Denmark should con- 
duct a campaign in support of the Protestants in the west of 
Germany, Gustavus, with Danzig or Stettin as a base, would 
march up the Oder through Silesia, straight on the emperor's 
hereditary possessions. The Silesians, mainly Protestants, 
would, as he knew, rise in his support and contribute heavily 
in recruits ; Bethlen Gabor would fall upon Poland and help 
to compel her neutrality ; the countries to be marched through 
were fruitful and able to sustain large armies ; the road was 
practicable, the Warta being the only considerable river to 
be passed. But all this demanded money ; and England and 
Holland — who alone had elastic finances — would not pro- 
duce it. With reference to this plan, it must be remarked 
that Gustavus recognized that it had weaknesses ; for Beth- 
len Gabor was the most unreliable of men, and Poland was 
not beyond being a serious enemy in his rear. But it was 
much his habit to deal in the possibilities of any given 
situation. He had the true gift of imagination, without 
which the captain, alike with the musician, the poet, the 
astronomer, never grows to his greatest stature. We shall 
encounter many of his imaginings. They all had their prac- 
tical value. 

For twelve years before Gustavus had any part in the 
Thirty Years' War, hostilities and atrocities had been con- 



CHRISTIAN UNDERTAKES WAR. 



103 



stantly going on ; and France, England and Holland, unwill- 
ing to see the Hapsburgs gain the upper hand in Europe, 
but without consistent plans, had been alternately subsidiz- 
ing and forsaking the Protestant princes of Germany. These 
three moneyed powers could not work in unison, having each 
a different motive and aim. In 1624 Gustavus made to 
England a proposal to undertake 
the German business on condition 
that a port on the south shore of 
the Baltic was assured him, and 
another in the North Sea ; that he 
should have abundant subsidies ; 
that England should pay for seven- 
teen thousand of the fifty thousand 
men he deemed essential ; that Den- 
mark should be neutralized by an 
English fleet in The Sound; and 
that he himself should have sole 
command of all forces under arms. 
But Christian was negotiating to- 
wards the same end ; he was will- 
ing to accept much lower terms ; 
he could not see as far as Gustavus did; and his offer 
the English government accepted in 1625. Until 1629 the 
Thirty Years' War was in what is known as the Danish 
period. The Danish king's object in undertaking the war 
cannot be said to have been as ingenuous as that of the 
Swede ; he acted more from a desire to enrich himself out of 
the bishopric of Bremen and other neighboring ecclesiastical 
foundations, than from any strong championship of Protes- 
tantism. Nor was he fitted to the task of commanding the 
armies of several nationalities, officered by men of diverse 
training and ideas, which the Protestants woidd put under 




Christian of Denmark. 



104 



WALLENSTEIN TO OPPOSE HIM. 




Danish Period. 



arms. But the Swedish monarch's war kept Sigismund 
away from Christian's field, which was a help pro tanto, and 
Christian never doubted his own ability. It was no doubt 
well that Gustavus was left to finish the Polish problem 
before he undertook a war so distant from the Vistula. He 
could afford to bide his time. 

Christian thus assumed the lead of the German Protestants. 
To oppose him the emperor in 1625 commissioned Wallen- 
stein to recruit an army. Tilly still commanded the forces of 
Maximilian. The Dane was promised a busy campaign. 



MANSFELD AND BRUNSWICK. 



105 



England agreed to subsidize Mansfeld and Brunswick, who 
joined the new commander-in-chief, thus giving him some 
sixty thousand men. But these troops were not rendezvoused 
until November, 1625, while Tilly had crossed the Weser 
into lower Saxony in July. Lukewarm towards Mansfeld, 
the British subsidies were irregular ; but the latter' s career 
as a bold and measurably successful adventurer was height- 
ened in brilliancy by relying largely on his own resources. 

Christian's opening was 
weak ; though he had in his 
service Count Thurn, and 
the margrave of Baden- 
Durlach (young Bernard of 
Saxe-Weimar, later so cele- 
brated, was present too), he 
merely garrisoned sundry 
places and sat down in a 
fortified camp at Bremen, to 
conduct a small war with 
Tilly, who duly appeared in 
his front. He was appar- 
ently unmindful of the fact 
that Wallenstein was rapidly 
putting afield an army for 
the emperor, and that dan- 
gers were encompassing him on every side. Between them 
Tilly and Wallenstein may have had seventy thousand men. 

Albrecht von Waldstein, or Wallenstein, was born a Bohe- 
mian Protestant, and educated as a Moravian ; but though he 
early threw himself into the arms of the Jesuits, his religion 
was limited to belief in himself and the tenets of astrology. 
He entered the service of the emperor as a young man, and 
earned his praise and gratitude by many able military and 




Wallenstein. 



106 WALLENSTEIN. 

diplomatic schemes. He became wealthy by marriage, 
wealthier by his own speculations, and was already prince of 
Friedland, and one of the most powerful men in Bohemia, 
when Ferdinand needed to raise an army. 

It is alleged that Wallenstein agreed with Ferdinand that 
he would sustain his army on the country ; but it is probable 
that the emperor promised to support it. That his low treas- 
ury forbade his carrying out such an undertaking made the 
matter come to the same thing. On the other hand Wallen- 
stein probably agreed that there should be no plundering ; 
that he would raise victual by contributions from the regularly 
constituted authorities. It was all one ; the countries through 
which Wallenstein passed were invariably left a desert. To 
create an army was what both emperor and general aimed at ; 
the means by which it was raised or fed or paid was imma- 
terial to either. 

Wallenstein's method of supporting his army was no other 
than that of the adventurer Mansf eld, but he did it in a more 
systematic way, acting in every land he entered as if he were 
the supreme lord, whose only law was I will. He paid his 
men well ; he took good care of them ; he kept them out of 
danger until he disciplined them into the semblance of an 
army ; he was himself magnificent, and deemed nothing too 
good for his followers. Tilly, on the other hand, was a rough, 
blunt soldier, whose men worked hard and had but an occa- 
sional reward in the sack of a town. Wallenstein's army was 
on a much more splendid, if no more efficient scale. 

The Czech was unquestionably an able strategist ; he pre- 
ferred, to be sure, to avoid battle and resort to manoeuvre ; 
but according to the art of that day, he had few peers. An 
equally shrewd politician, he harbored schemes looking towards 
the unity of Germany under the Hapsburgs, with equality of 
the two religions, in which schemes he himself should figure 



HE DEFEATS MANSFELD. 107 

as leader ; but these material strivings not unfrequently inter- 
fered with his better military knowledge. Unlike a great 
commander, he did not call the political situation to the aid 
of his strategy ; he rather subordinated his strategy to his 
political desires, forgetful that it is only after victory that one 
may gainfully do this. While Wallenstein served a Catholic 
master, he had the breadth to see that in religious toleration 
lay the best chance to spread the imperial power ; and toward 
this end he constantly strove. 

Jealous of any competition in the field, Wallenstein resolved 
to open a campaign on his own lines about the left flank of 
Christian. He passed from Bohemia into Saxony, crossed to 
the right bank of the Elbe at Dessau, where he fortified a 
strong bridge-head, and prepared to advance on the Danish 
king. To counteract this advance, Mansfeld, who had been 
in the Liibeck country and in Brandenburg, crossed the 
Havel, took Zerbst, and in late April, 1626, marched boldly 
on towards the Dessau bridge. His attempt, April 25, to 
capture it failed ; Wallenstein held his men behind their 
defenses, and at the right moment debouched upon Mans- 
feld's exhausted troops, which had shown some gallantry in 
the advance, and cut his army to pieces. 

Mansfeld was elastic. With the help of John Ernest of 
Saxe-Weimar, he again recruited forces in Brandenburg and 
Silesia (the devastation of the war and the burning of home- 
steads made half the population ready to enlist), and at the 
end of May moved towards Hungary, via Crossen, Gross Glo- 
gau and the Jablunka Pass, to join Bethlen Gabor, who was 
again at war with the emperor. Wallenstein, sending to Tilly 
some six thousand men under Merode, followed Mansfeld, a 
fact so singular, so eccentric in both a military and a collo- 
quial sense, that only the fear of grave danger to Ferdinand 
from the joint operations of Mansfeld and Bethlen Gabor, can 



108 TILLY DEFEATS CHRISTIAN. 

explain it. By some authorities lie is stated to have received 
especial instruction from Vienna to follow Mansfeld, and 
that under these he unwillingly directed his march via Juter- 
bogk towards the Oder. It was a creditable thing for Mans- 
feld to lure an old and able soldier like Wallenstein after 
him, and away from his proper sphere ; and it was equally 
discreditable to Wallenstein to be so lured away by a man to 
whom he would have referred with a sneer. 

Mansfeld was not as fortunate as his manoeuvre was bold. 
In December, 1626, Bethlen Gabor made a new peace with 
Ferdinand, and Mansfeld was driven to disband his army and 
to make his own way to Venice, where he died. Brunswick 
had died in the spring. Neither of these soldiers of fortune 
lived to see the awful burning of the fire they had so largely 
helped to kindle. 

Wallenstein's retrograde march had been useless, and he 
did not again get to work in north Germany until late in 
1627. He had wasted two campaigns. 

While Wallenstein was thus occupied, Tilly followed up 
King Christian. In May, 1626, Christian marched towards 
the Elbe to the aid of Mansfeld, or rather to lay his hand on 
the Weser bishoprics, but found that both he and Wallen- 
stein had moved towards Hungary. He attacked the Dessau 
position, but, aided by a reinforcement from Tilly, the gar- 
rison left there by Wallenstein drove him back, and he 
retired to Brunswick, and sat down to the siege of several 
towns. Nothing but smaller operations took place between 
the rival armies, and these mostly fell out in favor of Tilly. 
After taking Gbttingen, and learning that Christian had 
advanced on him as far as Nordheim, Tilly moved toward 
the reinforcements Wallenstein had sent him, drew them in, 
and turned on his adversary. Christian withdrew, but Tilly 
followed him up, reaching him at Lutter, August 27, 1626 ; 



IMPERIAL SUCCESS. 109 

Christian's unpaid troops fought in a half-hearted manner, 
and Tilly defeated him badly. Christian retired to Holstein 
to recruit. This operation redounds to Tilly's credit, and 
caused the Protestant princes to shake their heads as to 
Christian's ability to carry out his programme. German 
Protestantism was not to be thus conserved. 

In truth, Christian was in a bad way. The common folk 
had a song, of which the refrain ran, " Perhaps within a year 
he '11 be, A king without a kingdom." He sent embassies 
everywhere, — to England, Holland, Venice. France and 
Holland gave only a part of the promised subsidies ; yet by 
praiseworthy exertions he got together in the winter of 1626-27 
an army of thirty thousand men. Cut off from the lower 
Saxon Circle, he had thrown that part of Germany into a 
defensive attitude; and now Brunswick turned to the em- 
peror ; Mecklenburg ordered the Danish troops out of its ter- 
ritory, and Brandenburg sent reinforcements to the Poles. 

The wonderful imperial successes of the past five years in 
war and politics had left only Mecklenburg, Pomerania and 
Denmark to uphold the integrity of the Protestant faith. 
Ferdinand dreamed of extending his empire to the Baltic ; 
and there were folk, even Protestants, who deemed such a 
consummation not wholly to be regretted ; for as against the 
ill-doings of Mansfeld and Brunswick, Ferdinand and the 
empire stood for order. His armies opened the campaign of 
1627 by reducing Silesia ; Tilly crossed the Elbe at Arthen- 
burg in August, and moved into Holstein. Christian stoutly 
defended himself against Tilly's advance ; but Wallenstein, 
who had marched with nearly a hundred thousand men 
through Silesia and Brandenburg, burning and plundering, 
and extorting all manner of contributions, now appeared on 
the scene. Sending Arnim to Pomerania, and Schlick to 
Mecklenburg, each with a small army, Wallenstein crossed 



110 ILL-DISCIPLINED TROOPS. 

the Elbe at Winsen towards the end of August, and moved 
into Jutland. Tilly, meanwhile, had again beaten Christian 
in September, and the king, leaving garrisons in Gliickstadt 
and other strong places, had gradually retired up the penin- 
sula to avoid further battle. On the arrival of Wallenstein, 
who, as the emperor's general, claimed to be the ranking offi- 
cer, Tilly was sent back across the Elbe, ostensibly to pro- 
tect the joint communications, but really to be got out of the 
way, while Wallenstein cleared the peninsula of the Protes- 
tant forces, and drove the Danes to take refuge in the 
islands, whither, having no fleet, he could not well pursue 
them. Though one of his titles was that of " Imperial Ad- 
miral," he had no ships, and could not isolate towns with a 
harbor. 

There was widespread opposition to Wallenstein's military 
sway, and especially to his soldiery. He had scarcely a 
friend in north Germany. Every one protested against Fer- 
dinand's army, while technically remaining loyal to the 
emperor. The great Czech's work was, however, done with 
zeal and military intelligence ; and he was shortly rewarded 
by Ferdinand with the duchy of Mecklenburg, which, having 
sustained Denmark, was declared to be forfeited ; and he had 
already been created duke of Friedland. The end of 1627 
saw the emperor in full control of the shore of the Baltic, 
save only Stralsund, and in possession of all its abutting 
countries. Pomerania was occupied; Wismar and Ros- 
tock were taken ; only the Hanse towns and Stettin still held 
their own. Brunswick and Hesse-Cassel were the sole prov- 
inces which maintained any show of independence. 

It must be said to Wallenstein's credit that, however intol- 
erable his regime, he was not fighting the battles of the Jes- 
uits, or of religious oppression. To him Protestant and 
Catholic were one. His controlling idea was imperialism — 



WALLENSTEIN ELATED. 



Ill 



Hapsburgism — and to accomplish this he was willing to lay- 
all religious disputes aside. But Ferdinand could not recog- 
nize his duties as emperor apart from his duties as a Cath- 
olic, and Wallenstein was compelled to follow his dictation. 
The Czech was at the height of his glory. He dreamed him- 
self the conqueror of Germany, at the head of a powerful 
army, in the new role of deliverer of the empire, advancing 




Stralsttnd. 
Partly from an old plan. 

on the Turks, and taking Constantinople. He forgot the 
Catholic League ; he forgot Maximilian and Tilly. And he 
forgot in his dreams, but not in reality, the king of Sweden. 
So long as Gustavus held sway on the Baltic, as he now did, 
Wallenstein's power was an uncertain term, — and he knew 
it. He had been watching the career of the " Snow King," 
as he jeeringly called him, and while he did not hold him at 
a great value, as measured by his only standard, himself, he 



112 STRALSUND. 

yet saw in Gustavus' holding of the Baltic grave cause to 
fear for his own schemes. 

Stralsund was now the saving clause. This strongly forti- 
fied city was of equal importance to all Protestants. Eng- 
land, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, the Hanse towns, all joined 
to help her. She could, like Danzig, be provisioned from the 
sea. Gustavus had always recognized the value of Stralsund 
as the best strategic base on the Baltic. He had at one 
moment conceived the idea of conducting a defensive cam- 
paign in Germany, and of going to Stralsund in person to 
organize it from there. It would be fatal if the Catholic 
League should control so important a harbor. He had al- 
ready sent Stralsund supplies, and dispatched six hundred 
men under a good officer, Colonel Rosladin, with a naval 
adviser, Admiral Hemming; and in 1625 he had made a 
twenty years' treaty, offensive and defensive, with the town. 

Stralsund was not one of the so-called free cities, but 
was practically on the same basis, though she owed nominal 
allegiance both to Pomerania and the emperor. But she 
declined to admit the imperial army, whose ill fame had pre- 
ceded it, whereupon Wallen stein ordered his lieutenant, 
Count Arnim, to besiege the city. Arniru already held the 
island of Rugen, and soon took Danholm, which commanded 
the mouth of the harbor; but in March, 1628, the Stralsund- 
ers drove him out of this latter island. 

The town held a number of old soldiers, six hundred 
Danes, and six hundred Swedes, and the citizens were instinct 
with courage. In May Gustavus had sent them a cargo of 
powder, and Christian, who was now in earnest, joined in 
putting Stralsund on a solid footing. Wallenstein, angered 
at the unexpected resistance, was fain to come to the aid of 
his lieutenant. " I will take Stralsund, were it hung to 
heaven by chains," he is, somewhat doubtfully, quoted as 



WALLENSTEIN BAFFLED. 113 

saying; and to a deputation of citizens he pointed to his 
table : " I will make your city as flat as this." The citizens 
sent their property and families aboard ship or to Sweden, 
but showed no signs of yielding. Wallenstein, surprised, 
nettled, disconcerted, kept on with the siege, but made no 
progress. Soon after his arrival at Stralsund, about the 
end of June, he ordered a storm, and kept it up three days. 
But it was met at all points, despite valor, ability and im- 
mense excess of force. No greater result followed a twenty- 
four hours' bombardment. Without a fleet, or means of cre- 
ating one, the siege ran the same course as Gustavus' siege 
of Danzig. On July 9 and 10 more Danish troops and a 
Danish fleet arrived, and a week later two thousand Swedes 
under Leslie and Brahe. Wallenstein felt his weakness, and 
abated his demands, but with no result ; and on July 24, 
1628, he retired from the siege with a loss of twelve thousand 
men, baffled. Stralsund had taken the first step in saving- 
Protestantism in Germany. 

In 1628 matters in Germany were ripe for absolutism. 
The Jesuits anticipated full control of European affairs. The 
ideal of Ferdinand, to recover the lost dignities and power of 
the empire ; and either the ideal of Maximilian, to recover 
for the church its lost property, or the ideal of Wallenstein, 
to found unity on a military government, seemed about to be 
realized. Gustavus' ideal of a Corpus JEvangelicorum — or 
union of all Protestant powers for self-defense — had not 
been formulated. No part of Germany now stood out except 
the Hanse towns ; and to reduce these seemed but a small 
work compared to what had already been accomplished. To 
a deputation of Hanse towns which pleaded for Stralsund, 
Wallenstein had replied : "I will have Stralsund first, and 
each of you in turn after ! " But when they had conquered 
all Germany, it was on this commercial rock that the efforts 



114 PEACE OF LUBECK. 

of Ferdinand and Wallenstein were wrecked. Truly, money- 
is the sinews of war. 

Meanwhile Stade, at the mouth of the Elbe, had been taken 
by Tilly, but Gliickstadt held out, and in January, 1629, 
Tilly retired from this place, though Wallenstein lent his 
personal aid. The towns, the merchant class in other words, 
had demonstrated that they were greater than these vaunted 
generals ; stronger in their rights than the successor of the 
Caesars. They had put a limit to their conquests. 

It was the siege of Stralsund which brought conviction to 
the mind of Gustavus that Sweden must and now might throw 
herself into the scale against the Hapsburgs. He was far- 
sighted, as Christian was not. Denmark had been subdued 
on land, but though at sea she still held her own, Christian 
had lost courage. Finally begging for mercy, Wallenstein, 
who recognized, if he did not acknowledge, his own limitations, 
was only too ready to show it. At the Peace of Liibeck, 
May 12, 1629, Christian was freed from the obligations he 
had taken on himself at the inception of his luckless cam- 
paigns. In this Danish period of the Thirty Years' War, the 
emperor had been completely successful ; but Christian was 
treated with uncommon leniency, for Wallenstein wanted 
securely to shelve him before he undertook to master Gusta- 
vus ; and on the promise that he would thereafter stand aloof 
from German affairs, Christian even received back the lands 
which the emperor had taken. 

Wallenstein had already received his reward. Maximilian 
was now given the Upper Palatinate and that part of the 
Lower Palatinate which is on the right bank of the Rhine, 
coupled to its electoral vote ; and within these lands Protes- 
tantism was soon interdicted. 

The emperor had begun the war by seeking to discipline 
some rebellious subjects ; he had ended by conquering all 



EDICT OF RESTITUTION. 115 

Germany. The Edict of Restitution — issued May 19, 1629 
— compelled the Protestants to restore to the Catholics all 
the religious property acquired by them since the Peace of 
Passau in 1552 ; and Wallenstein was charged to see this 
done. The archbishoprics of Magdeburg and Bremen, the 
bishoprics of Minden, Yerden, Halberstadt, Liibeck, Ratz- 
burg, Miznia, Merseburg, Naumburg, Brandenburg, Havel- 
berg, Lebus and Camin, and one hundred and twenty smaller 
foundations, were torn from the Protestant clergy and their 
congregations, and restored to the Catholics. With Wallen- 
stein at the head, this was not done leniently : all Germany, 
from the Alps to the Baltic, groaned under the awful manner 
of the doing. Protestantism was fairly proscribed. In some 
localities it was worse than in others. In Nordlingen there 
was not a single Catholic, but the imperial commissioners 
nevertheless marked all the churches and their property for 
surrender to Catholic priests. 

To be truthful, the fault had lain with the Protestants. 
They had never stood by each other, nor acted for any time 
in concert ; their political jealousies had been stronger than 
their religious aspirations. On the other hand, the emperor, 
both in politics and war, had shown a persistency worthy of a 
better cause ; while his generals, Wallenstein and Tilly, and 
his right-hand man, the elector of Bavaria, had well seconded 
his courage and intelligence. 

Meanwhile two strong men had been watching the successes 
of Ferdinand : Richelieu from his jealousy of the Hapsburgs 
and dread of their ascendancy ; and Gustavus from his love 
of Sweden and fear that Protestantism would be trodden out 
of Germany. 

There is little in the campaigns of the first twelve years of 
this war which savors of what to-day we call military method. 
Occasional smaller pieces of work were excellently done, but 



116 PURPOSELESS WAR. 

the whole was unsystematic, and the grand strategy of the 
field was forgotten in the political ideas of the leaders, and 
in the commissariat demands of the armies. In a country 
parceled out like Germany, this was not to be wondered at. 
The armies marched hither and yon without consistent pur- 
pose. Allies did not work into each other's hands. A town 
rich in booty was as much an objective of every commander 
as a fortress at a key-point or the army of the enemy ; and 
the habit of living on the country was coupled with atrocities, 
the recital of the least of which makes one's blood curdle. 
Wallenstein, Tilly, Mansfeld and Brunswick were guilty of 
acts of savagery which would stamp them with eternal infamy, 
— except that such was the era. Marches were mere devas- 
tating raids, only then having an ulterior object when the 
conquest of a province lay in the way ; and the fact that it 
was believed that no fortress should be left in the rear of a 
marching army made all operations slow and indecisive. 

We shall see a different method while Gustavus Adolphus 
is in the field. 

All this anticipates the Polish campaigns of Gustavus from 
1625 to 1629, to which we must now return. 




Genevese. (16th Century.) 



X. 

THE POLISH WAES CONTINUE. 1625-1627. 

In 1625, unable to prolong the truce -with Poland, Gustavus, with twenty 
thousand men, set sail for Livonia, and thence invaded Courland. Here he was 
met by a Polish army, which he defeated at Walhof in January. Hi a idea still 
was that he might aid the Protestants by pushing a column through Silesia. 
In 1626, with reinforcements, he sailed for Pillau, which he took, though it 
belonged to Brandenburg ; then advanced on Konigsberg, and down towards 
Danzig, seizing all the towns on the way, and besieged this, to the Poles, essen- 
tial harbor. Sigismund came up with an army and blockaded Mewe, which the 
Swedes had taken ; but Gustavus relieved it by a brilliant coup. In 1627 the 
Poles under Koniezpolsld tried, before the king's arrival, with partial success, 
to raise the siege of Danzig ; and cut off some of the Swedish reinforcements ; 
but when Gustavus reached Danzig, affairs changed. The king, too venture- 
some, was here wounded, and matters remained at a standstill. In August the 
Poles drew near ; and in an ensuing engagement Gustavus was again and more 
severely wounded. While invalided, a naval engagement took place off Danzig, 
in which the Swedes were beaten, but the siege was not raised. When con- 
valescent, the king captured some surrounding towns, and more effectually shut 
in the place. Owing to his late arrival and two wounds, this campaign was not 
of marked gain. 

Aftek the completion of the new military organization of 
Sweden, and the failure of all attempts to negotiate a per- 
manent peace with Sigismund to replace the existing truce, 
Gustavus, like a true soldier, made up his mind, if war it 
must be, to open hostilities by vigorous measures. With 
twenty thousand men, on a fleet of seventy-six vessels, he again 
set sail for the mouth of the Dwina, in June, 1625, captured 
Kockenhusen and other points held by the Poles in Livonia, 
and reduced the entire province. The attempt of a Polish 
colonel with two thousand men to retake Riga failed, the 



118 



POLISH CAVALRY. 



detachment being all but destroyed ; and a second one by 
Marshal Stanislaus Sapieha, with three thousand men, was 
driven off with a loss of all the guns. From Riga Gustavus 
crossed the border into Courland and captured Mittau and 
Bauske. The cold weather had come, but the king was better 
equipped to conduct a winter campaign than the enemy ; for 
his men, with their fur-lined boots of waterproof, oiled leather 
and thick stockings, and otherwise coarsely but serviceably, 
warmly and uniformly clad, could keep the field at any 
season. 

Field - Marshals Leon Sapieha and Gosiecowski, with 
twenty-six hundred cavalry and thirteen hundred foot, ad- 
vanced to the rescue of 
Bauske. Gustavus went out 
to meet them, relying mainly 
on his excellent infantry, for 
he had little horse. Early 
recognizing the value of foot, 
it was he who first in modern 
times put it in its proper 
place with relation to the 
other arms. He believed in 
it ; and, moreover, the Swed- 
ish horses were too small for 
anything but light cavalry, 
so that, until bigger animals 
could be got in Germany, he fain must put up with what he 
had. Once Gustavus found how much reliance he could 
place upon his foot, he never ceased to devote his best ener- 
gies to its development. On the other hand, the Polish gen- 
erals' reliance was on their superior cavalry, which was their 
nation's favorite arm. 

Gustavus had as yet commanded in no pitched battle, and 




Polish Horseman. 



BATTLE OF WALHOF. 119 

he was eager to measure swords with the enemy. The armies 
met at Walhof, in Courland, January 16, 1626, and the king 
utterly worsted the Poles, with loss of sixteen hundred killed, 
many prisoners, much of the artillery, baggage and many 
standards, the Swedish loss being small. There are no de- 
tails of this battle. Except the king's brief dispatches home, 
which dwelt on results rather than tactics, there is no record 
from which we can divine his method of attack. The fire 
in the Castle of Stockholm in 1697 destroyed many papers 
which might have given us more light. Sapieha fled to 
Lithuania, followed by Gustavus, who on the way took Bir- 
zen and another strong place; which success accomplished, 
the king again endeavored to make peace. But part of the 
embassy which he sent to Warsaw was seized, and with diffi- 
culty released. Peace was not upon the cards. The king 
demanded of Lithuania a heavy contribution in money, and, 
the season being advanced, left de la Gardie to secure his 
conquests in Livonia, and returned to Stockholm, with the 
intention of attacking from another quarter in the spring. 
Being still restricted in strategic operations by the Polish 
war, the king thought that by advancing up the Vistula, he 
might connect on his right with Christian of Denmark, or 
Mansfeld, and on his left with Bethlen Gabor. This project 
was the one already referred to for a joint effort to reach the 
heart of the empire. But it was never put into execution. 

From Stockholm, on June 15, 1626, the king, with twenty- 
six thousand men on one hundred and fifty ships, sailed to 
the coast of East Prussia, landing near the fortress of Pillau, 
at the mouth of the Frische Haff. This place belonged to 
his brother-in-law, the elector of Brandenburg, as duke of 
Prussia, then a fief of Poland ; and Gustavus asked permis- 
sion to occupy it as a storehouse, and a strong place to pro- 
tect his reembarkation. But the inert elector demanded 



BLUNT LANGUAGE. 121 

three weeks to consider the matter ; Gustavus had no time to 
spare ; he summarily took Pillau, and by equally unanswera- 
ble arguments compelled the elector to neutrality. With his 
characteristic bluntness he said to him : "I am aware that 
you prefer to keep a middle course, but such a course will 
break your neck. You must hold on to me or to Poland. I 
am your brother Protestant, and have married a Brandenburg 
princess ; I will fight for you and defend this city of yours. 
I have good engineers, and know a bit of the business my- 
self. I doubt not I shall defend it against Poland or — the 
devil. My men, if you like, are poor Swedish peasant louts, 
dirty and ill-clad ; but they can deal you lusty blows, and 
shall soon be given finer clothing." His acts, moreover, 
argued better than his phrases. 

In case he should make an advance through Brandenburg, 
Gustavus did not lose sight of the fact that his army would 
be moving into a position where it would become the strategic 
centre of a line, of which the king of Denmark, who stood 
between the Elbe and the Weser, was the right, and Mans- 
feld, on the Oder, was the left. All his lines of advance 
were duly weighed, and his active mind made potential plans 
far ahead. But his immediate task was simpler ; and supe- 
rior to any plan for joining the German struggle was the 
intent to cut Poland off from access to the Baltic, as he 
already had Russia, by the occupation of the entire coast line. 
He never lost sight of his great aspiration, " Dominium Maris 
Baltici." He gauged its value rightly. 

Gustavus continued his advance. Konigsberg was threat- 
ened until it promised neutrality. Braunsberg, Frauenburg 
and Tolkemit were surrendered July 1-3, and the Jesuits here 
and elsewhere were expelled from the cities, and their goods 
confiscated ; for these priests were mixed up in every polit- 
ical matter, and did infinite harm. Elbing, July 6, and Mari- 



122 



DANZIG. 



enburg, July 8, followed suit, as well as all the towns of West 
Prussia. But Dirschau and Danzig, which had broken neu- 
trality, and were in dread accordingly, held out. Gustavus 
moved on Danzig, and camping in the Werder, near the 
mouth of the Vistula, reconnoitred the town and the fortress 
Weichselmiinde. He then began to recruit from the con- 
quered districts, and crossing the Vistula on a bridge of boats 




Danzig and Vicinity. 



below Dirschau, July 12, he stormed that town and Mewe, to 
hold which cut Danzig off from her trade with the interior. 
The king's hope was not only to take Danzig as a base and 
depot for himself — " sedes belli " was the phrase of the day 
— but to hamper the Poles by cutting off from them access 
to an essential harbor. Everything looked promising, when 
suddenly Sigismund appeared on the theatre of operations 
with thirty thousand men, and camped at Graudenz, several 
days' march up the Vistula. 



SIGISMUND APPEARS. 123 

Danzig was a strong place. It disputed with Novgorod 
the title of richest mart of eastern Europe. It was a free 
city, owing mere nominal allegiance to Poland, and was a 
prize for him who controlled it. But it could be provisioned 
from the sea, which Gustavus seemed unable to prevent. 
Danzig proved valuable to the Swedes as an object-lesson ; 
and from his experience here the king was able to show Stral- 
sund how to defy Wallenstein ; but though it had this second- 
ary value, its obstinacy in holding out largely neutralized the 
Swedish successes in the four years of the Polish war. 

The presence of Sigismund quite altered Gustavus' plans. 
Though much weaker than the Poles, the king deemed it wise 
at once to march against them. The fortresses he had taken 
were no permanent defense ; he must beat the Poles in the 
field. Led by Sigismund and his son, Vladislas, the enemy 
advanced to Marienburg; on meeting the Swedes, a few 
unimportant skirmishes occurred, when the Poles withdrew, 
crossed the Vistula near Neuenburg, and began a siege of 
Mewe from the south. 

The Swedish commandant was prepared to resist to the 
uttermost, but Mewe needed victual, and, though such an 
operation was then unusual, Gustavus personally headed a 
reinforcement and succor-train for the garrison with three 
thousand foot and three hundred horse. Despite due at- 
tempts at secrecy, the plan was discovered ; the Poles essayed 
to stop the convoy, and with light horse and some artillery 
occupied a position athwart its path. Rather than bring the 
whole Polish army down upon himself, the king resorted to a 
ruse, gave his movement the appearance of a reconnoissance, 
and proceeded to withdraw. His clever dispositions deceived 
the Poles, and throwing out Count Thurn with part of his 
force to divert the enemy's attention by active demonstra- 
tions, he himself made a detour with his convoy somewhat out 



124 



HANDSOME OPERATION. 



of sight and covered by horse. Thurn performed his work 
so well that the Poles, under the impression that the Swedish 
garrison was about to be drawn from Mewe, and that the 
place would fall to them in any event, made no serious 
advance. Their manifest role was to attack sharply, and 

to closely observe the place 
to ascertain the real purpose 
of the Swedes. They did 
neither. 

Thurn had a severe skir- 
mish with the Polish light 
horse, which alone had been 
put in, and was obliged to 
withdraw a space for fear of 
being cut off from the king. 
But he held the force in 
check, and the Poles, though 
they had abundant time, neg- 
lected to reinforce it. Gus- 
tavus managed luckily to run 
his convoy into Mewe from the north side, and then turned 
to protect the withdrawal of Thurn. 

The Poles had used but a small part of their troops, though 
in actual numbers ten to one of the Swedes. They feared 
that Gustavus was in force, and feinting to draw them from 
their good position. A simple demonstration on either of 
the Swedish flanks would have disclosed the true situation, 
and been fatal to the king's project. Gustavus retired safely 
up river to Dirschau, and the Poles raised the blockade of 
Mewe. Their loss, stated at five hundred men, far exceeded 
that of the Swedes. 

It is rare that a fortress has been re-victualed in this 
fashion in the teeth of so numerous besiegers. As an opera- 




Operation at Mewe. 



DANZIG RELIEVED. 125 

tion it was quite unusual then, and is not usual at any period. 
The management of the affair was perfect. In the fighting 
Gustavus had himself led his men, and, as was his wont, run 
grave danger, being, it is said, twice captured in the fray, and 
twice cut out by his immediate companions. He had tested 
the quality of the Poles, who, except for undoubted bravery, 
had little in the way of good soldiership to recommend them, 
and did not appear to be dangerous opponents. Sigismund's 
generals had a narrow appreciation of what a large army 
should do which blockades a town, and finds itself attacked 
by a handful of the enemy seeking to relieve the place. Bold 
as Gustavus' attempt had been, he was well seconded by 
Polish hebetude. On the succeeding day he marched in force 
into Mewe. Sigismund, less persistent in war than obstinate 
in politics, made signs of desiring peace, but coupled his pro- 
posals with impossible conditions. Placing his troops under 
Oxenstiern in winter-quarters, for the year was far spent, the 
king returned to Stockholm. The ministry and people sup- 
ported his refusal to listen to the Polish conditions, and a 
more reasonable proposal was drawn up and sent to Warsaw ; 
but as Sigismund did not answer before the next year, the 
war went on. 

The command of the Poles, at the opening of 1627, was 
given to Crown-Marshal Koniezpolski, who was sent to raise 
the siege of Danzig. Gustavus was at home ; but the Swedes 
held Putzig, Dirschau, Mewe, Elbing and Pillau, thus encir- 
cling the city. To break through this line, Koniezpolski saw 
that Putzig afforded the easiest means, and he was as success- 
ful in his venture as he was bold. The garrison of Putzig, 
unfortunately short of both munitions and food, was quickly 
reduced to straits ; but though surrendering, it obtained the 
right to march out with colors flying. This again opened the 
communication of Danzig with Germany, and neutralized all 



126 SWEDISH REVERSES. 

Gustavus' work so far done. Nor was this the end of ill- 
luck. Eight thousand recruits, coming to the Swedes from 
Germany, were met by Koniezpolski on the march from and 
driven back to Hammerstein, and the place forced, on April 
15, to capitulate, in a manner not creditable to the Swedish 
garrison. The officers were made prisoners — among them 
Colonels Streif and Teuf el — and the men released on a 
year's parole. This was a notable piece of partisan warfare. 

During this period of Swedish reverses, Gustavus had been 
kept in Stockholm by contrary winds. By no means cast 
down by these backsets, he doubted not to overcome them 
when he should reach the ground. Sailing from Elfsnabben 
May 4, he landed on the 8th at Pillau. When he reached 
the army at Dirschau with the six thousand troops he had 
brought, he found it increased by recruitment up to thirty-five 
thousand men. But to his surprise he also found that the 
elector of Brandenburg had taken up arms against him, and 
had raised four thousand " blue coats " for his suzerain 
Sigismund. These were intrenched near Pillau, at Loch- 
stadt. Gustavus made short work of the matter ; he set out, 
speedily captured the little Prussian army, and forcibly en- 
listed the entire body under his own standard. George Wil- 
liam learned his lesson, and thereafter remained neutral. 

Gustavus began by a careful reconnoissance of the works 
surrounding Danzig. The citizens had occupied the " Danzig 
Head," or strip of land at the west mouths of the Vistula, 
and here was a redoubt which Gustavus especially desired to 
reconnoitre. While thus engaged, May 25, 1627, viewing 
the works from a boat, he was wounded by a bullet in the 
flesh of the hip, which laid him up, and further delayed 
operations. During this period the Poles concentrated their 
forces ; Sigismund threatened de la Gardie in Livonia, and 
the king was compelled to send Horn to his assistance. 



GUSTAVUS TWICE WOUNDED. 127 

Gustavus Adolphus was personally much too venturesome 
for a commanding general. In this particular the family ten- 
dency to insanity perhaps manifested itself ; but his was as 
admirable a form of the disease as that of "Macedonia's 
Madman." The same day on which he was wounded, he had 
been almost captured by two Polish horsemen, who suddenly 
sprang upon him while out reconnoitring and far from his 
attendants ; and but a few weeks before, he had barely 
escaped being cut down in a cavalry skirmish. But no ex- 
postulations were of any avail. Gustavus would run risks 
fit only for officers of lower rank. For this venturesome- 
ness Oxenstiern attempted to take him to task, saying that 
a monarch had no right to risk a life so needful to his sub- 
jects. But Gustavus cited Alexander, and the necessity of 
showing his men that they must despise danger. " What 
better fate could overtake me than to die doing my duty as 
king, in which place it has pleased heaven to set me?" he 
quietly replied. In this particular the monarch could not be 
controlled. 

Meanwhile, Koniezpolski drew within six miles, and under- 
took, on August 18, a reconnoissance of the Swedish posi- 
tion. Gustavus headed a body of cavalry and drove back 
the Polish horse, which retired through the village of Eo- 
kitken. This place lay in a country much cut up by hills and 
ravines, and the village was held by Polish infantry and artil- 
lery. Gustavus had placed some batteries on a convenient 
hill, with orders to attack the village, and had galloped up an 
adjoining height to reconnoitre, when he was again wounded 
through the right shoulder, near the neck. The Swedes, 
somewhat disheartened, withdrew. 

The bullet was deep and could not be cut out, and the 
wound proved dangerous. Gustavus at first feared that it 
was his mortal hurt ; and, indeed, he was kept from duty for 



128 DANZIG AGAIN SHUT IN. 

three months. Meanwhile the siege went slowly on. It is 
related that the king's body physician, while dressing the 
wound, was led to say that he had always feared this or 
worse, as His Majesty so constantly courted danger. " Ne 
sutor ultra crepidam," answered the royal patient. 

On recovery Gustavus recaptured Putzig, and once more 
cut Danzig from its communication with Germany, while a 
Swedish fleet under Sternskjold blockaded the port. The 
Danzigers had also patched up a fleet ; and under command 
of Admiral Dickmann, a Dane, they made, November 28, an 
attack on the Swedish navy, and inflicted a severe defeat 
upon it, but not without heavy loss of their own. Dickmann 
and Sternskjold both fell, and a Swedish captain — some say 
Sternskjold — blew up his ship rather than surrender. This 
naval battle exhibits the strength and ability of Danzig. 
The misfortune seemed to cap the adverse occurrences of the 
year, though the Danzigers had won but an empty triumph, 
and at a loss of five hundred of their best sailors. A 
stronger fleet was brought up, and Gustavus began to draw 
his lines closer about the city. In order to do this effectu- 
ally, it was essential to capture two towns south of the Frische 
Haff. The king, though not yet convalescent, headed the 
party against Wbrmditt; General Tott that against Gutt- 
stadt. The former was taken by storm ; the latter surren- 
dered. No further operations, save another minor naval 
fight in the harbor of Danzig, occurred this year, and Gus- 
tavus returned to Stockholm in December, partly for the 
benefit of his health. 

The campaign of this year was of small account, — indeed 
almost a failure, — owing to the adverse weather, which kept 
the king from the scene of action, and to the aggravating- 
delays occasioned by his wounds. It was fortunate that the 
enemy took no better advantage of their opportunities. 



BAD SWEDISH POSITION. 129 

Nothing can excuse their carelessness in not assuming the 
offensive during this period, in connection with the garrison 
of Danzig. The Poles never lacked courage, but they were 
rarely well led. A vigorous policy must have occasioned seri- 
ous complications to Gustavus' lieutenants, and might have 
brought disaster ; for Gustavus had not sufficient forces to 
blockade so strong a place as Danzig, and at the same time 
hold head to an army fully equaling his own, and vigorously 
directed. Koniezpolski opened against Gustavus' lieuten- 
ants with vigor ; but he drew back to a strict defensive after 
the arrival of the king. 

There were uncompleted fortifications on the Bisckofsberg 
and Hagelberg, near Danzig, which it has been said should 
have been attacked by Gustavus, but even their capture 
would not necessarily have brought about the fall of the 
place ; for the Swedish ordnance, though the best then 
known, was not capable of reaching every part of the town 
from those eminences ; and the Danzigers would have fought 
hard. It seems that Gustavus might have been wiser to 
resort to a simple blockade, and in July, before the very 
dilatory enemy was ready, to fall on and cripple him for 
the campaign. Had he accomplished the latter, he could 
have turned on Danzig with a better chance ; for without 
the moral support of the presence of Sigismund's army, the 
town would scarcely have resisted so stoutly ; and easy terms 
might have secured it. 

Moreover, in a military sense, the Swedes were not well 
placed. The time for the Polish army to attack Gustavus 
was while his attention was taken up by the siege. His 
desire to capture Danzig before moving on the enemy was 
perhaps a mistake. As Lossau has pointed out, had the 
Poles defeated Gustavus while he lay near the city, so as to 
punish his army badly and thrust it back towards the west, 



130 WALLENSTEIN'S OPINION. . ' 

his line of retreat would have been through an extremely 
poor country, in which an army, especially one partly broken 
up, could scarcely subsist ; whereas an advance on the Polish 
army up the Vistula, even if resulting in defeat, would have 
given Gustavus a better chance to retire and to save his army 
whole. But these were new problems of war, unknown to 
the soldiers of the day ; and the Swedish monarch was slowly 
working' them out. He cannot be held to look at war from 
our own point of view, illumined as it is by the work of a 
Frederick and a Napoleon, as well as by his own ; for he was 
still hampered by the fear of fortresses, so strong a sentiment 
of his era. And happily Koniezpolski showed indolence to 
a degree which corrected the evils which might have flowed 
from Gustavus' position and wounds. 

Danzig had so far resisted Gustavus' best efforts. It was 
a proud city, without religious prejudices, and while owing 
slender allegiance to Poland, it held its own rights at a high 
value. In this it was seconded by Holland, and morally sus- 
tained by all powers which preferred not to see the Baltic 
reduced to the position of a Swedish lake. 

It must be said to the credit of Wallenstein's foresight 
that he was constant in his advice to the emperor to assist 
the Poles. If Gustavus was allowed to win success he would 
prove the worst enemy the empire could have, he wrote to 
Ferdinand. He would gladly have accepted Gustavus as an 
ally, if the monarch could at a cheap price be kept from 
entering into the German imbroglio, where he himself was 
now enacting the chief role. With his usual habit of sowing 
by all waters, Wallenstein even sought diplomatic means of 
establishing communication with Gustavus, meanwhile doing 
his best to cripple him, and instructing his lieutenant on the 
Baltic, Arnim, to prevent the Swedes at all hazards from 
landing in Pomerania or Mecklenburg'. 



XI. 

THE POLISH WARS END. 1628-1629. 

Again joining his army near Danzig, in 1628, Gustavus pushed the siege ; 
Koniezpolski indulged in making sundry diversions; but the king marched out 
against him, and in a sharp battle drove him up the Vistula. Danzig was about 
to fall, when unusual floods overflowed the country, and drove the Swedes out 
of their works. Gustavus had been studying the German situation, had made a 
treaty as to Baltic trade with Denmark, and had thrown a force and munitions 
into Stralsund. When the emperor overran all north Germany except the free 
towns, the king saw that he must shortly enter the contest, and he pushed the 
Poles hard for a peace. In 1629 the emperor sent a force to join them, and 
operations became active. The enemy moved sharply on Gustavus, and with 
initial success, but within a few days he turned the tables and defeated them 
with heavy loss. This, coupled to the exhaustion of Poland and the interven- 
tion of France, brought about a six years' truce, under which Gustavus held all 
his conquests. In these Polish wars Gustavus, like Csesar in Gaul, had trained 
his army for its future work in Germany, and himself in war's broader prob- 
lems. He had learned to know his men and they to lean on him ; and he had 
gradually transformed the slow-moving army of the day into an active and 
mobile force. He was now ready to enter the lists for Protestantism. 

During the winter, in relation to commerce in the Baltic, 
Gustavus had made a treaty with Denmark, which granted 
him a passage through The Sound, — a matter of prime 
importance. In the spring of 1628 he left Stockholm with 
thirty ships. Near Danzig he encountered seven of the city's 
vessels, of which he took five and sank one ; and landed prob- 
ably near Putzig. The Swedish fleet cruised opposite Dan- 
zig, but could not prevent the place from being victualed by 
Polish blockade-runners. The army was still concentrated 
near Dirschau, in its location of last year, but Gustavus 
desired to establish a foothold at some point nearer to Dan- 



132 SWEDISH VICTORY. 

zig ; lie selected and personally headed a body of seven thou- 
sand men, and, unexpectedly to the enemy, threw them across 
the Vistula, on a quickly constructed bridge, to the island 
called the Kleine Werder, which he took. This island gave 
him a better position from which to threaten and choke off 
the place. No serious fighting is spoken of ; very likely none 
occurred ; but in this respect there are many gaps in Swed- 
ish annals ; we have more data about Caesar's battles than 
those of Gustavus. The Swede did not write commentaries ; 
and his dispatches are usually bare of military detail, though 
full of matter dwelt on at that day. 

Without undertaking any serious operation, Koniezpolski 
endeavored to interrupt the siege by diversions against 
several of the towns held by the Swedes. He captured Mewe, 
again took Putzig, and, gradually approaching Danzig, hoped 
to effect something which might raise the siege. Gustavus 
detailed General Tott with a cavalry force to watch these 
operations. Tott fell into an ambush west of Grebin, but 
though surrounded by thrice his force, he cut himself out 
without harm ; he even captured some prisoners and flags, 
and brought in the news of the enemy's force. Unwilling to 
attack the Swedish army, Koniezpolski annoyed the besieging 
force materially, and Gustavus determined to rid himself of 
his interference. Immediately upon this affair of Tott, leav- 
ing a part of his forces before Danzig, he suddenly marched 
with the bulk of them on the Polish army, met and attacked 
it not far from his camp, — the exact locality, curiously, is 
not known, — and by his sharp initiative well kept up, the 
mobility of his foot and his vastly superior artillery, defeated 
it with a loss of three thousand men, four guns and fourteen 
flags, and drove it well up the Vistula. Koniezpolski himself 
fell, heavily wounded. 

It is a grievous loss in the study of the life of Gustavus, 



FAILURE AT DANZIG. 133 

that so little is known of these Polish battles ; so little of the 
siege of Danzig. Here was a general engagement with a high 
percentage of loss, and yet even the battle-field is neither 
named, nor can it be identified. This war was the monarch's 
schooling, as Gaul was Caesar's, or Spain Hannibal's ; but we 
know as much of Hannibal's Iberian, and much more of 
Csesar's Gallic, battles than we do of these. 

The king now tightened his grip on Danzig, by land and 
sea. It would soon have been reduced by hunger, had it not 
been for a serious flood in the Vistula, which drove the 
Swedes out of their trenches and camps, and forced Gustavus 
to raise the siege all but totally. And at the same time 
Sigismund came on the scene with heavy reinforcements for 
Koniezpolski, which complicated the situation still more. 

Sigismund was more implacable than ever. Approaches 
from the Dutch states-general to bring about a peace were 
met with refusal. Leagued with the emperor, Spain and all 
the Catholic powers, and under the thumb of the Jesuits, he 
would listen to no argument. He looked forward to the 
probable arrival of a Spanish fleet in the Baltic as well as to 
an imperial auxiliary corps from Germany ; he had received 
subsidies from both branches of the Hapsburgs, and the Polish 
parliament had voted him generous supplies. Moreover, as 
the emperor, in 1628, had succeeded in gaining the upper hand 
in Germany, Sigismund was emboldened by the failure of 
the Swedes at Danzig to hope, not only to drive them from 
Poland and Livonia, but eventually to carry the war into 
Sweden, and again lay claim to the throne of his ancestors. 

After the failure of their own disjointed efforts, there had 
been but two sources from which the Protestants of Germany 
could expect assistance : from Gustavus, or from Christian of 
Denmark. They had enlisted the services of the latter to no 
great profit, and as it was inexpedient for Sweden to under- 



134 FAILURE AT STRALSUND. 

take two wars at the same time and the Polish king would 
not make peace, they could, for the moment, not count on 
Gustavus. But when Christian was driven back by Tilly and 
Wallenstein to the confines of Jutland, many of the Protes- 
tants again turned to the king with urgent appeals for help. 
Wallenstein had already selected Stralsund as the most avail- 
able base for operations against Sweden or Denmark, and 
was blockading it. Such a threat to the Baltic had naturally 
brought Christian and Gustavus closer together, and the 
treaty they made included an agreement to defend the free- 
dom of the Baltic. Christian went personally to Stralsund, 
provisioned it, and saw to its proper manning ; and the Danish 
fleet destroyed several vessels sent by Sigismund to the help 
of Wallenstein. All this had occurred during the king's own 
blockade of Danzig ; and finally Wallenstein was compelled 
by Stralsund's brave resistance, as well as by the command 
of the emperor, who disapproved of his generalissimo's obsti- 
nacy, to give up the blockade. This imperial reverse was in 
reality a Swedish victory ; for it was due to the heroic defense 
of the town by the garrison which Gustavus had sent thither 
under Colonel Leslie. 

The siege of Stralsund was so noteworthy a failure from 
every point of view that it alone, says Lossau, suffices to dis- 
pute the place of Wallenstein among remarkable generals. 
And yet Wallenstein was a great soldier. Did not Gustavus 
fail before Danzig ? 

The defense of Stralsund opened to Gustavus himself an 
important foothold for operations in Germany, as well as for 
the protection of the Baltic ; and that he had well weighed 
this fact is shown in the treaty which he made with the city, 
one extremely favorable to it and of equal value to the pro- 
jects of the king. 

The imperial party paid small heed to Gustavus. Wal- 



SMALL OPERATIONS. 135 

lenstein by no means underrated the king, but he distinctly 
overrated himself. Had he stated the case as he saw it, he 
might have placed Gustavus next to himself among the com- 
ing captains of Europe, — proximits, sed longo intervallo. 
His structure of mind had not the self-confidence which accu- 
rately gauges the opposition while relying on its own powers ; 
it rather possessed the self-esteem which arrogates all to its 
own capacity and allows nothing to the opponent. This was 
the secret of Wallenstein's great strength, and of his singular 
weakness as well. He won where self-assertion alone can 
win ; when he met equal power, he lost. 

The emperor did not keep Sigismund provided with money 
as had been agreed, and had Polish coffers not always been 
at a low ebb, the king might have found it more difficult to 
maintain his footing near Danzig. After the raising of the 
siege, Gustavus received considerable accessions of troops, 
including two thousand cavalry from Germany under Rhine- 
grave Otto Ludwig ; but he was unable to bring the Polish 
army to a decisive battle on terms which he could accept. 
Koniezpolski confined himself to small operations and occu- 
pied strong positions ; and Gustavus was fain to content him- 
self with half measures. The Swedes took Neuenburg, Stras- 
burg with much material, and Schwetz ; and one detachment 
under Baudissin undertook a gallant raid to the gates of 
Warsaw, where it produced the utmost consternation, while 
Wrangel made a bold foraging expedition inland from Elbing. 
Later Baudissin was captured, but exchanged. The Poles 
made a few unimportant gains, and on one occasion actually 
surprised the Swedish army ; but they failed to follow up 
their successes. 

The singular political complications made the war in Ger- 
many drag slowly on. Having won his exceptional triumphs, 
the emperor, as we have seen, began tampering with Chris- 



136 CONGRESS OF LUBECK. 

tian of Denmark, and finally (1628-29) a congress was held 
at Liibeck, and May 22, 1629, peace ensued. From this 
peace, Gustavus, king of Sweden, and Frederick, ex-elector 
of the Palatinate, were expressly excluded. Gustavus had 
sent his representatives to the congress, but Wallenstein had 
arrogantly refused them admittance ; nor was any notice 
taken of the king's protest by either the emperor or Wallen- 
stein. Gustavus had at the time sent an embassy to Ferdi- 
nand ; but he recalled it when excluded from the Liibeck 
Congress ; nor would he receive an imperial mission, because 
in the accompanying documents the title of king had been 
formally denied him. But he made a public demand for the 
restoration of the status quo ante helium. The refusal of 
Wallenstein to recognize Sweden was one of the immediate 
reasons of Gustavus undertaking the Protestant cause in Ger- 
many ; for it was the one thing wanting to convince him that 
Sweden would shortly become involved. 

The successes of the emperor and the many high-handed 
acts of Wallenstein had the effect of bringing the Protestants 
into warmer sympathy, and his brethren in Germany once 
again turned to Gustavus for leadership. Distinct appeals 
had been theretofore made in 1615, 1619, 1621 and 1622 ; 
but never had the cause so sadly needed help, nor Sweden 
been so nearly ready. The conditions seemed to drag the 
king against his will into the contest which had been going 
on for ten years. France had already flung herself in the 
scale, out of antagonism to Spain and fear for the balance of 
power in Europe, and had offered herself as intermediary 
to procure a peace with Poland, so as to untie Gustavus' 
hands. It was fully determined in Sweden, so early as Feb- 
ruary, 1629, that Gustavus should at no distant date move 
to the assistance of Germany. 

In the beginning of this year (1629), during the king's 



IMPERIAL AID TO POLAND. 137 

absence at home, Wrangel fell upon the Polish army in its 
winter-quarters. The latter retired, but Wrangel followed, 
caught up with it at the village of Gurzno, near Strasburg, 
beat it, and drove it to Thorn, which place, however, he could 
not take. The Poles, severely oppressed by the burdens of 
the war, earnestly desired peace, but Sigismund Was ready 
to consent to no more than a short truce even under the 
pressure of the Brandenburg and Dutch ministers ; and this 
truce even was so made as to be capable at any time of being 
broken. 

Meanwhile an imperial army under Count Arnim, of seven 
thousand foot, two thousand horse and some artillery, was 
approaching to aid the Poles. Gustavus joined the Swedish 
army in June, about the time when Arnim made his junc- 
tion with Koniezpolski at Graudenz. As Sweden was at 
peace with the empire, this was a gratuitous act of war by 
the emperor; it was really intended to retard the Swedish 
interference in Germany, and it accomplished its purpose. 
There was a considerable body of Swedish horse at Marien- 
werder, and this the king now reinforced with foot to meet 
the enemy's threat, sending at the same time a protest to 
Wallenstein for his breach of the comity of nations. 

Gustavus had eight thousand foot and five thousand horse. 
Koniezpolski, with his much superior forces, determined to 
deliver battle. His plan was good, and might have been 
dangerous to any one not watchful. On June 27 he marched 
from Graudenz along the river flats towards Marienwerder, 
purposing to bear off to Stuhm and turn the left flank of the 
Swedes. But Gustavus had already concluded to retire to 
Marienburg, and his column was defiling along the Stuhm 
road. So soon as he was instructed as to Koniezpolski's 
march, he sent the rhinegrave with a body of eight hundred 
horse to protect the narrows between the lakes at Stuhm, so 



138 



A MANOEUVRE LOST. 



as to head off the enemy from the marching column and 
oblige them to make a long detour, and with strict orders not 
to bring on an engagement, but merely to occupy the enemy's 

attention. The enemy's cav- 
alry reached Honigfeld ; the 
king's orders were not obeyed, 
and when he shortly arrived 
with the rear-guard of his 
army, he found that the rhine- 
grave had attacked, fallen 
into an ambuscade, and been 
beaten with a loss of two hun- 
dred men. In his endeavor 
to sustain him, a hot combat 
of cavalry ensued. Gustavus 
again was in the thick of the 
fray, and narrowly escaped 
death or capture. A Polish 
cavalryman seized him by the 
shoulder-belt, but Gustavus slipped it over his head and 
escaped. His party was beaten back, but the defile at Stuhm 
was held, and the whole force regained Marienburg. He had 
lost a number of men, flags and guns. 

The fault had lain with the landgrave ; but it appears 
from this engagement that Gustavus' light cavalry was not 
always as watchful as it should have been, or not always put 
to proper use. Perhaps the lack of enterprise on the part 
of Koniezpolski may have bred this carelessness. Nothing 
trains cavalry except an active enemy. 

Gustavus' spirit was singularly elastic. Unable to sit still 
under defeat, he went again at the problem, and soon 
retrieved his disaster. The enemy advanced to the river 
Nogat, really a part of the delta of the Vistula. Gustavus 




Stuhm Operation. 



VICTORY AND TRUCE. 139 

moved upon them, and in a sharp and decisive encounter, 
defeated them with a loss of four thousand men. The details 
of the battle are not known. Some historians ignore it. But 
it is manifest that the campaign did not end with a defeat of 
the Swedes. The sole evidence of many of the operations 
of Gustavus lies in the dispatches from the army to the home 
government ; and the king's singular modesty of statement 
robs the after-world of much it ought to know. His letter 
to Oxenstiern about the battle of Breitenfeld might be the 
description of a small cavalry combat. There were no war- 
correspondents in those days, and the Swedish officers were 
too busy with making history to write it. Fancy a battle in 
our day in which the enemy forfeits four thousand men being 
thus lost to fame ! Triumphal columns are erected by some 
nations to perpetuate battles where the loss has been but a 
dozen ! And yet this is not without parallel in modern days. 
Many of the actions about Petersburg in 1864 and 1865, where 
casualties ran up into the thousands, are barely recorded with 
a name ; many outpost-combats where hundreds bit the dust 
are known only as " the picket-fight of such a date." 

The ill-success of their late venture had a further tendency 
to make the Poles long for peace ; and the barbarous con- 
duct of the troops of Arnim, a pestilence which broke out 
in the camp of the allies and kept the country people from 
bringing in supplies, the growing fear of Gustavus, and the 
dwindling prospect of success combined to make Sigismund 
more tractable. Negotiations were opened in August, 1629, 
and, under the influence of the French ambassador, were 
ended in a six years' truce. This was signed, on October 5, 
at Stuhmsdorf ; and by its terms Sweden retained all Livo- 
nia ; Memel, Pillau and some other places in ducal Prussia ; 
Braunsberg, Tolkemit and Elbing in Polish Prussia. Dan- 
zig remained neutral, but by a separate treaty agreed to pay 



140 GUSTAVUS' SCHOOLING. 

two thirds of its customs into Gustavus' treasury. Sweden 
restored the rest of Poland and Courland to Sigismund. But 
in case no peace should result from the truce, Marienburg 
was to be again surrendered to Sweden, being meanwhile 
held by the elector of Brandenburg in trust. Gustavus 
was formally recognized as king, — a marked concession by 
Sigismund. 

Richelieu no doubt had weight in bringing about this 
truce ; he was the last ounce in the scale ; but it is scarcely 
doubtful, even if France had not acted as intermediary, that 
Sigismund would have concluded peace. He and his subjects 
were exhausted by the war. 

Thus, after eight years, ended the early wars of Gustavus 
Adolphus. The king had conducted six campaigns against 
Poland, and two against Denmark and Russia. These cam- 
paigns, not possessing the importance of his later ones, and 
lacking a record of their remarkable features, — for it is 
often the details which show up the military ability displayed 
in a campaign, — were yet what trained Gustavus in the 
habits of war, and permitted him to view the struggle in 
Germany from a broader basis of experience; they were a 
practical school in which he could teach his right hand the 
cunning it would so soon need on the European stage, and 
his army could be hardened into a body fit for its arduous 
task. He entered the Danish war a young and inexperienced 
leader of men ; he emerged from the last Polish campaign 
ready equipped to prove himself in the coming two years one 
of the world's great captains. 

In these campaigns Gustavus had observed the practical 
working of his new army organization, and learned a fond 
the then existing system of tactics and strategy. He was 
enabled to gauge the advantages of his own method, which, in 
the short remaining term of his life, he moulded into what 



CAVALRY AND ARTILLERY. 141 

was the origin of the modern art of war, — into what brought 
the world back to dispositions both intellectual and humane. 
These campaigns had been conducted against different peo- 
ples, — Danes, Russians, Poles, — and the king had gleaned 
varied experience. He learned the habits of different lead- 
ers and armies, and strove to adapt his own ways to theirs. 
His infantry underwent a good schooling against the large 
and excellent forces of Russian and Polish cavalry, and 
learned to protect itself against this arm. It was swift on 
the march, and steadier in defeat and victory than any imperial 
troops, even if no more stanch in battle than the Walloons of 
Father Tilly. His own cavalry the king had gradually im- 
proved by imitating the Poles, and by adding discipline and 
ensemble to it. There was superb horse on the other side, the 
Black Brigade, for instance, under its model cavalry leader, 
Pappenheim ; but, headed by the king, the Swedish was as 
good. Had it earlier met the German cavalry, it could not 
have held head against it. Gustavus' artillery, much im- 
proved in organization, drill and technical knowledge, gave 
a wonderful account of itself. He had studied what the 
Turks had done, and had profited by their errors. They had 
got the biggest guns which could be cast ; he made his handy, 
quickly served, and accurate of aim. Theirs were of all sizes 
and patterns ; he reduced the matter to some sort of scale. 
There were heavy guns, needing thirty-six horses to trans- 
port ; siege-guns, much smaller ; and field-guns, six-, four- and 
two-pounders, the latter being handled by one horse. The 
regimental four-pounder could be fired faster than a musket : 
and the leather cannon, originally adopted for their small 
weight, were driven out by the monarch's light metal gun. 

Swedish success was largely due to technical engineering 
and ordnance skill, which seconded the energy and ingenuity 
infused by Gustavus into the armies under his control. As 



142 "ACTION, ACTION, ACTION!" 

an engineer, he was far ahead of Wallenstein or Tilly. He 
understood the value of field-works in their best sense ; his 
engineer companies were numerous ; and by quickly building- 
works to protect his men, he would stand on ground the 
enemy would abandon. 

Under Gustavus' watchful eye, every branch of the ser- 
vice had grown in efficiency. Equipment, arms, rationing, 
medical attendance, drill and discipline, field manoeuvres, 
camp and garrison duty, reached a high grade. Energy and 
extra exertion were recognized ; luxury was discountenanced ; 
the troops looked earnest, severe, but they were kindly. The 
officers had all served from the bottom up, and had learned 
to work and to obey. Promotion was by seniority and merit. 
Justice was pronounced. Of the many Romanists in the 
Swedish ranks, none complained of unfair treatment. 

As in the little, so in the large. Gustavus treated each 
country he entered with a strict eye to economics, instead of 
sucking out its life-blood. The population made no com- 
plaints, and he could nourish and keep his men together in 
camp, when the enemy must disperse in cantonments, and 
run the risk of being destroyed before concentration. 

In the seventeen years Gustavus had been king, each cam- 
paign had added to the skill and efficiency of the Swedish 
army. There was no question of its distinct superiority over 
any European army of its day. And chiefly was this shown 
in substituting the idea of mobility for the old idea of weight. 
Speed was the watchword of Gustavus' tactics ; it was his 
speed which won his victories. His motto was, "Action, 
action, action ! " 

In these campaigns, too, not only had Gustavus learned to 
know his generals and men, but they had gauged their mon- 
arch-leader; and there had arisen that mutual confidence, 
esteem and affection which only the great captain effectually 



GUSTAVUS' MOTIVES. 143 

commands. As there was no danger or labor which their 
general and king did not share, in which he did not bear an 
equal part, so the Swedish army saw in him a harbinger of 
victory, a sure protection in disaster ; Gustavus' own char- 
acter, bravery, religious ardor, honesty and humanity infused 
itself into every soldier in the army. Nothing can exagger- 
ate the advantage which this good understanding between 
chief and army gives ; no leader who lacks the divine spark 
ever reaches its full measure. 

In listening to the last appeal of the Protestants to under- 
take their cause, Gustavus was actuated by faith in his reli- 
gion, by an honest sense of the dangers and needs of Sweden, 
and by feelings in which personal or national ambition had 
no foothold. It is a difficult task to twist even isolated 
remarks or letters of the king into a semblance of personal 
ambition ; it is impossible, from the whole of his utterances, 
to deduce any ambition but that of serving his country and his 
country's God. His address to the Estates in 1630 plainly 
shows his mood : " The Hapsburgs are threatening Sweden, 
and must be met instantly, stanchly. It is a question of de- 
fending the land of our sires. The times are bad, the danger 
is great. Let us not look at the unusual sacrifices and load 
we must all unite to bear. It is a fight for parents, for wife 
and child, for house and hearth, for country and religion." 
And the people's answer was as full of courage and of mean- 
ing as the king's address. It was like the ups welling of the 
old Roman burgess-blood when the unparalleled disaster of 
Cannae threatened the state with annihilation ; it was like the 
uprising of the North when the nation was threatened with 
disruption in 1861. Heavier taxes were willingly paid ; indi- 
viduals built and equipped vessels ; every man laid aside his 
private broils and griefs, stood shoulder to shoulder and linked 
hands with his neighbor for God, King and Fatherland. 



144 THE SNOW KING. 

The openly expressed opinion of Wallenstein, — in a cer- 
tain respect a measure of this great but arrogant man, — with 
regard to the undertaking of the king of Sweden to lead the 
Protestant cause in Germany, was well shown in his boast 
that he would " drive the Snow King from Germany with 
rods if he should dare to show his face there ; " and Ferdi- 
nand, puffed up with his wonderful successes, echoed the 
opinion with : " So we have got a new little enemy, have 
we ? " But Wallenstein knew better, if Ferdinand did not. 
His private correspondence and statements show a clear 
appreciation of the danger which the arrival of Gustavus 
threatened to his carefully erected structure. Alone, Wal- 
lenstein ruled Germany as its strongest warrior; with Gus- 
tavus there, he knew that he had a rival, he feared that he 
might find his master. 




Albanese Horseman. 



XII. 

THE SWEDISH PERIOD BEGINS. JANUARY TO JUNE, 

1630. 

In twelve years (1618 to 1630) the emperor had overrun all Germany. 
No one had heen found to hold head to Wallenstein and Tilly, and the Protes- 
tants turned in despair to Gustavus. It was a wrecked cause he was to cham- 
pion, and none of the Powers lent active aid. Happily Wallenstein was put 
aside, and France was ready to pay money to check the dangerous rise of the 
Hapsburgs. Gustavus entered the lists. Whether Sweden should conduct a 
defensive or an offensive war was promptly settled by the king, sustained 
by his Estates and people. Though he placed too much reliance on the Protes- 
tant princes, his general calculations were just. The motives of the king were 
honorable ; he had no personal ambition ; he proposed to protect the interests 
of Sweden and of Protestantism, — and what Sweden needed was a " bastion " 
on the south shore of the Baltic, to enable her to control that sea. The winter 
of 1629-30 was a busy one. Munitions were collected, taxes equalized, troops 
raised and equipped under the new system, and seventy-six thousand men 
were placed under arms, of whom thirteen thousand were destined for Ger- 
many. This number the king expected to double by recruitment there, for the 
emperor had at least one hundred thousand men. What Gustavus took with 
him was a mere nucleus for accessions from the German princes. 

Before the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, Ger- 
many was about equally divided between the Protestant 
and Catholic princes ; and when the former took up arms, 
the emperor's authority extended over not more than half of 
the territory which is comprised between the Rhine and the 
Oder, the Alps and the Baltic. At the expiration of twelve 
years of war (1618-1630) the entire territory named had 
been overrun by the imperial forces, save only the free towns 
of the north, Stettin and the fortress of Stralsund. The 



146 GERMANY COWED. 

Protestants had begun the war with encouraging prospects ; 
they were now disunited and cowed. It was under these con- 
ditions that from many sources entreaties reached Gustavus 
to come to the rescue of his brothers in the faith ; it was 
these conditions which the monarch faced in becoming the 
champion of Protestantism. 

Gustavus had for at least two years foreseen that he must 
take a hand in the German imbroglio ; early in 1629 such 
action was fully determined ; but when, in 1630, he finally 
appeared upon the scene, he was called on to contemplate so 
wrecked a cause, that the boldest soldier with inexhaustible 
resources would scarce have cared to face it ; while he stood 
almost alone, with the sole good-will of poverty-stricken 
Sweden at his back, and the very men who most ardently 
besought his aid were the ones who afforded him the least 
assistance. He had no earnest allies. Denmark was neutral 
if not an enemy, though Clmstian proffered friendship in 
public. France was uncertain, for though Richelieu was 
bound on the destruction of Austria and tendered subsidies, 
his method and his ultimate aim were not those of Gusta- 
vus. England could not be relied on. Holland, though the 
states-general approved its attitude, was jealous of Sweden's 
prestige in the Baltic, and was ready to take a hand in the 
matter from purely commercial motives, — ready to gain by 
Gustavus' defeat as much as by his victories. Liibeck and 
Hamburg limited their helpfulness to trading silver for the 
army-chest against Swedish copper. The dukes of Pomera- 
nia and Mecklenburg tendered assistance indeed, as well as 
the margrave of Baden, the administrator of Magdeburg 
and Landgrave William of Hesse ; but we shall see how 
much this meant. And meanwhile Poland was bitter as gall, 
and Bethlen Gabor was dead. Not a power was ready to 
throw itself heartily into the scale ; the German princes were 



FERDINAND MASTER. 147 

at odds among themselves and cowed by overwhelming mis- 
fortune ; and while the Hanse towns had armed to protect 
themselves, they cared not to aid Protestantism for any but 
selfish motives. Money was their god. 

The one' thing in Gustavus' favor was that the grasping 
measures of Ferdinand had for some time excited the gravest 
discontent among even the Catholic princes ; that the savage 
cruelties and ruthless devastation of the war had exasperated 
the Protestants and roused the horror of Europe. All poten- 
tates looked with distrust upon the growing manifestations of 
imperial ambition ; for Austria now had at her feet the very 
liberties of Germany. Whither might not Ferdinand's greed 
of power lead him ? On the other hand, most of the Prot- 
estant princes, to save themselves, had accepted the emperor's 
sway ; some of them, led by personal motives, were in accord 
with him ; others again sought protection in a neutral bear- 
ing. A mere handful, notably the dukes of Hesse-Cassel 
and Brunswick-Liineburg, as well as the free towns of the 
Hanseatic League, still maintained a bold front of opposi- 
tion, while Stralsund had held her own with the aid of a 
Swedish garrison, and Magdeburg had stood a siege by Wal- 
lenstein. But with these few brave exceptions, Germany had 
bowed her head to the stroke, showing neither power nor 
will to withstand the imperial dictation, or to fight for her 
religion or independence. Ferdinand was master. The Ger- 
man princes would probably have gone over to him in a 
body, had they not feared his future policy. He had the 
entire matter in his grasp. But no man is all-wise ; Ferdi- 
nand foolishly quarreled with his electors on a side issue, 
and lost their loyal support, while the Edict of Restitution, 
issued in March, 1629, completed the break-up of confidence. 

Not only were none of the other European powers anxious 
to come to Germany's assistance, but none of them were pre- 



148 FRANCE AND SWEDEN. 

pared to do so. England was busy with intestine disquiet, 
and in the end of the year made peace with Spain, which 
for once drew her closer to the Hapsburgs. The Netherlands 
were still at war with Spain, and the last thing they wanted 
was an inroad by the victorious armies of Wallerfstein, Tilly 
or Pappenheim. Spain herself was Hapsburg, and were she 
not so, she had, in addition to the war in the Netherlands, 
the Mantuan imbroglio in Italy. Denmark had been beaten 
into peace, and then bought into neutrality for a price, and 
Christian was morbidly jealous of Gustavus, and ready to 
do anything underhand to thwart his plans. The Turks 
were an uncertain element. Brandenburg had sent troops 
to Poland, and had scarcely forgiven Gustavus' foray on her 
territory. Saxony felt bound by her oath to the emperor to 
resist armed aggression, while John George, the elector, was 
intent on peace at any price. The other Protestant princes 
were either frightened or reduced in means beyond power 
to help. 

Only France and Sweden remained. Though France had 
at first inclined towards the emperor, or at least towards the 
League and Bavaria, when matters took too decided a turn 
in Ferdinand's favor, Cardinal Richelieu clearly saw that 
political gain lay in aiding the Protestants, so as to weaken 
the power of Austria ; but as Catholic France could not 
openly enter the lists on behalf of Protestantism, Richelieu 
preferred to use his influence with Sweden to take up the 
cause, relying for eventual results upon the location and 
healthy condition of the Swedish nation and the proven tal- 
ents of its king. 

The two marked features of European politics of the day 
were thus Austria's aggressiveness, and the change of the 
foreign policy of France. 

It was not difficult to induce Gustavus to enter into this 



A HEALTHY NATION. 149 

plan. The Swedes, in his opinion, needed a " bastion " on 
the southern shore of the Baltic in order to maintain their 
supremacy on this sea ; and Stralsund was just that. But 
Gustavus' demands were at first deemed too high by France. 
He asked a considerable lump sum down and six hundred 
thousand rix dollars a year as subsidy. This Richelieu 
declined, though his general course remained helpful, and 
he eventually came to Gustavus' terms. 

Sweden was neither a populous nor a rich country. She 
numbered but a million and a half of souls, and her annual 
budget ran up to not exceeding twelve million rix dollars. 
But she made up in a great degree for this weakness in 
material resources by the simplicity and strength of her 
people, her well-regulated government and particularly her 
remarkable military organization. The army had been tried 
in its eight years' war against Denmark, Russia and Poland ; 
and the-genius of its king, sustained by the love and devotion 
of his people, and coupled to the strong Protestant sentiment 
of the nation, made Gustavus a noteworthy champion. Many 
reasons weighed with Sweden and the king. That the emperor 
had sent an army to help the king of Poland against him 
while he was at peace with the empire ; that the Swedish 
embassy had been thrust from the congress at Liibeck and 
heaped with contumely, rankled deeply in Gustavus' nature. 
Sensible, frank and generous, he was yet sensitive in matters 
relating to his dignity, and prompt to resent any affront to 
Sweden. The oppressions of the Protestants appealed strongly 
to both king and nation. Danger unquestionably threatened 
Sweden now that Germany had succumbed, and Gustavus 
was ambitious to show that his country was not a cipher in 
the religious and political complications of Europe. 

When the question came up as to whether Sweden should 
wage a defensive war within her own borders, or an offensive 



150 OFFENSIVE OR DEFENSIVE? 

war in Germany, many of the more conservative statesmen 
inclined to the former view, notably the prime minister, 
Oxenstiern. The emperor, said he, had one hundred and 
sixty thousand veteran troops, while Protestant Germany was 
exhausted. How could Sweden with her small army enter the 
lists against such a host, and without aid? Better spend 
money on a strong fleet and hold the south shore of the Baltic. 
Oxenstiern's idea was perhaps not a mere inert defensive, for 
he was willing to argue the other plan ; but he proposed 
to conduct any offensive which might be undertaken to the 
east of the Oder, and to remain strictly on the defensive in 
Pomerania. The king gave many reasons against this. His 
idea was merely to observe the country to the east of the Oder, 
and to resort to a stout offensive in north Germany. Sweden, 
he argued, could count more than Oxenstiern would allow on 
the aid of the Protestant princes and free towns of Germany, 
if once upon its soil. The Hanse towns, which had held a 
convention at Liibeck in November, 1629, where they had 
agreed to arm for mutual defense, now sought alliance with 
the several Protestant powers, and had made efforts to secure 
the aid of Sweden. Stralsund must not be forsaken. Wal- 
lenstein had made a bid for the Hanse towns by flattery, 
which failing, he had attacked Stralsund by force. This city 
had shown the ability of the free towns to defend themselves, 
and no time must be given for the idea of defense to grow 
cold. Magdeburg had proven her stanchness. All were now 
ready to aid. It was imperative for Sweden to hold the 
German coast of the Baltic, and prevent the emperor from 
building a fleet. An offensive war in Germany would cost 
Sweden less than the defense of her own soil ; and the saving 
for her people of the atrocities of such a war as was being 
waged on the mainland was a manifest duty. The defense of 
Sweden could well be left to its militia and fleet, if a Swedish 



THE KING'S PLAN. 151 

army opposed the emperor in Germany. Delay was the most 
dangerous thing of all. Should he once become absolute 
master in Germany, the emperor could no longer be con- 
trolled, and Sweden would be in greater danger than ever. 

In order to feel the pulse of the nation, the king convened 
in Upsala eleven of the leading Swedish senators ; and on 
mature discussion of the case presented by the king, these men 
unanimously agreed that an offensive in Germany was the 
wiser course. 

In the event, Gustavus was mistaken in his reliance on 
the willingness or ability of the Protestant princes of Ger- 
many to lend their aid ; he had gauged them at too high a 
value, for they proved to be controlled by their fears or their 
selfish interests rather than by the good of their religion 
or their country. But he was not mistaken in his financial 
estimates ; for in 1632 the war consumed only one sixth of 
the Swedish revenue. 

The king's plan was comprehensive ; and he never lost 
sight of the value of the sea. Unless he controlled the Baltic, 
he had no base whatsoever, and what he proposed was quite 
as much to equip a big Swedish fleet and a fair-sized Swedish 
army, as it was merely to land Swedish forces in Germany 
and there conduct a land campaign. That a base on the 
Baltic had no value without a powerful Swedish fleet no man 
saw more plainly than the king ; for years he had striven for 
dominium maris Baltici. 

Gustavus' motives in undertaking this war have been the 
subject of grave discussion and much disagreement. It can- 
not be alleged that they were purely religious, that it was 
solely as the champion of Protestantism that he risked so 
much. But it may be honestly claimed that he had no per- 
sonal ambition to subserve. He was by birth and nature a 
Viking, a species of colonizing fighter ; but he neither sought 



152 WAS GUSTAVUS AMBITIOUS? 

foreign conquest nor foreign gold. Sweden later became over 
lustful for both ; but Gustavus strove first for the defense of 
his fatherland, and next for the defense of his religion. He 
has been accused of seeking to create a Protestant German 
empire with himself as its ruler ; but there is no tangible 
evidence to sustain this view, while there is a multitude of 
testimony to controvert it. No monarch ever had a more 
intimate friend and confidant than Gustavus possessed in Axel 
Oxenstiern, his chancellor, trusted adviser and one of his 
able generals ; nor was there ever a man in whom truth was 
more ingrained. Many years after Gustavus' death, when the 
subject first grew into a controversy, Oxenstiern wrote in a 
private communication : " King Gustavus Adolphus wanted 
the Baltic coast ; he harbored the idea of some day becoming 
emperor of Scandinavia, and this land was to contain Sweden, 
Norway, Denmark to the Great Belt and the lands abutting 
on the Baltic. With this in view it was that he first con- 
cluded a peace with Denmark, as favorable as it was then 
possible to endure, and later one with Russia with regard to 
the Baltic. He took the coast and river mouths from Poland 
by seizing the lucrative customs. Then he attacked the Roman 
emperor, and demanded as war-indemnity from the German 
princes, to whom imperial lands should be given in exchange, 
Pomerania and Mecklenburg. Denmark was also to be 
clipped of all territory down to the Great Belt, and Norway 
was to become ours. It was on these lines that this great 
king intended to construct an independent kingdom. But 
that, as the saying goes, he desired to be German emperor is 
not true." 

So unbounded was the confidence of his subjects that the 
king had little difficulty in impressing his opinion on the 
people, the Estates and ministry, and shortly the work began. 
He opened negotiations with the anti-Hapsburg peoples. He 



SWEDISH PREPARATIONS. 153 

appointed his brother-in-law, Count John Casimir, his repre- 
sentative in Sweden, commissioned to act with the advice of 
the council and of Field-Marshals de la Gardie and "Wrangel. 
He made arrangements for internal government for a long- 
absence, leaving explicit instruction as to land administration, 
recruiting and taxes, loans, victual and war material for the 
future. He accumulated present moneys and supplies to 
accompany the army. He ordered new fortresses to be built 
on the coast opposite Denmark. He strengthened his fleet 
and built a number of transports. 

There were great preparations in Sweden during the winter 
of 1629-30. The nitre and sulphur works were kept busy 
shipping to the powder-mills at Naka and Watinge. Calcu- 
lations were made for furnishing a ton and a half of powder 
per regiment per month, and about fifty cartridges per man, 
plus twenty-four hundred pounds of lead and thirty-six hun- 
dred pounds of match punk, of which the consumption was 
necessarily large. The armories in all parts of Sweden were 
driven ; and armor, helmets, partisans, pikes, spades and picks 
were turned out by government and by private firms. Each 
regiment was to have issued to it five hundred and seventy-six 
muskets and bandoliers, four hundred and thirty-two sets of 
armor, four hundred and thirty-two pikes and one thousand 
and eight helmets and swords. In addition, forty-eight par- 
tisans were issued to the three officers and three non-commis- 
sioned officers of each of the eight companies, and sixteen 
drums to the regiment. 

In order to equalize taxes so that the aristocracy should 
not escape, a mill-tax, or tax on corn, had been laid in 1625 : 
in 1627 it was changed to a poll-tax ; and now, in 1630, a 
war-tax was added. The income in 1630 was about twelve 
million rix dollars, of which three fourths was spent on the 
war ; but in 1631 and 1632 the cost ran down to five and a 



154 FORCES RAISED. 

half and two and a fourth million rix dollars ; for German 
and foreign subsidies began to help out. 

The clergy preached the cause as heartily as the recruiting 
officers enforced it. All males from sixteen to sixty must 
report at the local rendezvous, and those who were not house- 
holders or who worked for wages were first enrolled. Of the 
rest, each tenth man was drawn by lot from those between 
eighteen and thirty, excepting miners, especially in the nitre 
and sulphur mines, and manufacturers of arms and ammuni- 
tion. Only one son was taken from a family ; a man having 
no sons was excused. On enlistment, papers in triplicate 
were made out, much as with us, and the men were subse- 
quently mustered in companies. The troops assembled at 
Kalmar, Elf snabben and other places for shipment to general 
rendezvous, in May, 1630. 

Arrangements had been made for raising men abroad as 
well as at home. Kniphausen and Spens were recruiting to 
good effect in England ; Falkenberg, in the Netherlands, had 
no luck. Many recruits were got from the mustered-out sol- 
diers of the late Danish war, and in Brandenburg, Poland 
and Danzig. In June, 1629, Colonel Morton arrived with 
two regiments of Scotchmen. 

In the conquered towns of Livonia and Prussia there were 
still twelve thousand men. These were left as a reserve 
under Oxenstiern, who recruited them up to twenty-one thou- 
sand. Six thousand more, under Leslie, were in Stralsund 
and on the island of Rugen. Leslie was active in recruiting, 
and the Hanse towns furnished a few men. By the early 
months of 1630 there had been organized an army of seventy- 
six thousand men, of which forty-three thousand were Swedes ; 
and in the fleet were three thousand more. Of this total, 
thirteen thousand were destined for Germany, to which were 
added, by reinforcements during 1630, twenty-three hundred 



COST PER MAN. 155 

men from Sweden, twenty-eight hundred from Finland, two 
thousand from Livonia, thirteen thousand six hundred from 
Prussia, and the six thousand garrison of Stralsund, an aggre- 
gate of about forty thousand men. There were left in Swe- 
den sixteen thousand men, in Finland six thousand five 
hundred, in the Baltic provinces five thousand, in Prussia 
seven thousand six hundred, — thirty-five thousand men in all. 

The cost of the forty thousand men in Germany was esti- 
mated at eighteen hundred thousand rix dollars a year, or 
forty-five rix dollars per man. This amount varied during 
Gustavus' reign from forty-one and one third to fifty-two rix 
dollars per man per year. Cheap enough service for any 
class of men, and the Swedes were of the best. 

Gustavus had no doubt that he would receive considerable 
accessions from the friendly princes of Germany ; and men 
from the disbanded armies of Mansfeld and Brunswick, it 
was believed, only waited his arrival to join his standard in 
large squads. The armies of Denmark and Poland, lately 
mustered out, would furnish abundant recruits. His thir- 
teen thousand men would, he calculated, be increased to a 
substantial body so soon as he placed foot on German soil. 
But as against the seventy-five thousand aggregate on Gus- 
tavus' muster-rolls, of which he led but thirteen thousand to 
Germany, Wallenstein and Tilly were yet afoot, with armies 
which easily reached a hundred thousand men. 

Gustavus issued no formal declaration of war. The attack 
on his ally, Stralsund, made the war appear to him a defen- 
sive one. But certain negotiations between the king and the 
emperor, which Gustavus well knew would come to nothing, 
were carried on for a while through the intermediation of 
Christian of Denmark. Stettin, the capital of Pomerania, 
was being threatened by the imperial army, and Gustavus 
felt that he must save the town. He was ready to sail from 



156 FINAL ARRANGEMENTS. 

Elfsnabben, whither all the troops were forwarded, by the 
end of May, but adverse winds kept him in port three weeks. 
His forces were embarked on two hundred transports, pro- 
tected by thirty men-of-war. 

The mouths of the Oder were to be the point of debarka- 
tion, and Gustavus had made himself familiar with every rood 
of the country. From this point he proposed to seize, or 
treat with, the cities along the coast on either side of Stral- 
sund, and especially Stettin, and make his base strong by 
a depot at the latter place, from whence he could advance 
up the Oder. The general plan was fully worked out ; the 
details had to wait upon the conditions of the moment. 

Pomerania had never been friendly, and had given aid and 
comfort to the imperialists ; but when the news came that 
Gustavus would probably land on her shores, Duke Bogislav, 
a very old man, sent an embassy to Gustavus to pray him not 
to make a sedes belli on his territory. Gustavus answered, 
without mincing words, that on their own attitude depended 
his conduct to the Germans when he should have reached 
their shores. He should sail for Pomerania, establish him- 
self within her borders, and use her as by her future acts she 
deserved to be used. 

Before embarking, the king issued a proclamation appoint- 
ing three days of public fasting and prayer for the success of 
the cause. 

After making all arrangements for the government of his 
kingdom, Gustavus' three-year-old daughter Christina was 
accepted as his heir ; to her all Swedes swore fealty, and the 
king left the fatherland in May, 1630, on what was to him 
and to all the world a holy mission, — to accomplish it, 
indeed, but never to return. 



XIII. 

GUSTAVUS LANDS IN GERMANY. JUNE TO AUGUST, 1630. 

Gustavus sailed May 30, and landed at the mouth of the Oder -without 
opposition, the imperial generals retiring to Garz and Anklam. Occupying 
Usedom and Wollin, he set his fleet to cruise along the coast, advanced on 
Stettin, and though Duke Bogislav sought to preserve his neutrality, took 
and garrisoned it ; upon which a favorable treaty was made, and the Swedes 
camped in Oderhurg, near by. Every place taken was strongly fortified. As 
the enemy held the rest of the coast, the communication between Stralsund, 
Stettin and East Prussia was not secure, and Gustavus set to work to extend 
his holding, and to blockade the places along the coast which he could not 
take, while the enemy strengthened Garz, and there encamped the bulk of their 
force. The king first intended to secure his foothold and the line of the 
Tollense in his front ; but while so operating, the enemy took Clempenow and 
Pasewalk, massacred the garrisons, and seized the Tollense. Oxenstiern, from 
East Prussia, was pushing out towards the king, who kept steadily at work 
making firm his standing on the coast ; Magdeburg declared in favor of the 
Swedes, and Colonel Falkenberg was sent thither to take command. 

The troops were embarked June 9, 1630 ; and after a delay 
of three weeks, waiting for a favorable wind, the fleet set sail 
with its burden so precious to Protestant Germany. Heavy 
weather still further retarded its progress in the open off 
Stockholm ; a stormy passage ensued, during which the ship- 
ping beat about several days, and was with difficulty kept 
together ; but it finally made land, and anchored July 4 in 
the lee of the island of Kiigen, close to Usedom, near the 
mouth of the Peene River. The two hundred transports and 
men-of-war had aboard six thousand sailors, ninety-two com- 
panies of foot, one hundred and sixteen companies (half- 
squadrons) of horse, and eight hundred guns of all calibres. 

Denmark had recently made efforts to purchase the island 



158 



THE LANDING. 



of Riigen, an acquisition which would have made a base at 
the mouth of the Oder quite insecure for Sweden. For some 
time the imperialists had held the bulk of the island, of which 
a large part belonged to the city of Stralsund ; and as it was 
essential to clear the coast, it was determined by Gustavus 
that Riigen should be recaptured. On March 13 Leslie 
took the island of Hiddensee, and garrisoned it with three 
hundred men ; on the 29th he put over troops to Riigen, and 
captured the works at the several landing-places out of hand. 
The imperialists tried in vain to eject the Swedes, and at the 
end of April retired wholly from Riigen, except a garrison 
of three hundred men in one of the forts, which on June 7 
p likewise fell. Riigen was thus secured to 

if- the Swedes. 

The imperial general, Torquato Conti, a 
cruel man even among the wolves of that day, 
and equally incompetent, was at Anklam, 
twenty miles to the south. So soon as he 
heard of the fleet being sighted, he sent de- 
tachments to light fires along the beach, 
hoping Gustavus would believe that a large 
hostile force was on hand. But the ruse 
failed ; Conti lost his best chance of dealing 
the Swedes a hearty blow as they landed, and 
his parties retired from the coast. Boats, 
ordered some time before by Gustavus, were 
on hand under control of his own officers ; 
the king headed the landing parties, and the troops were 
disembarked on Usedom. As Caesar is said to have fallen 
when he reached Africa, so Gustavus, on landing here, 
stumbled on the gang-plank, and slightly injured his knee ; 
but he is not recorded to have turned the matter into an 
omen. The Swedish blood flowed too calmly to need such 




The Landing- 
place. 



LACK OF RATIONS. 159 

adventitious aid. On putting foot on shore, he knelt and 
offered up unaffected prayer ; then seized a spade, and began 
himself the work of intrenching a line to cover the landing. 
It took two days to disembark ; the companies were succes- 
sively set to work ; an old line of defenses was occupied ; 
new ones were drawn up, and soon the first intrenchments 
of Peeneinunde, which place was included in the circuit, 
were completed. Victual issued to the men had been mostly 
consumed in the long delay and passage ; provisions had 
been ordered to be collected in Stralsund, but the king found 
on hand only a small supply. It was not an encouraging 
beginning. 

Gustavus was wont to speak his mind ; and for this lack 
of provision he roundly held to task John Skytte, to whom 
he had committed the business ; he moreover sent urgent 
dispatches to Oxenstiern, in Prussia, to hurry forward sup- 
plies ; and feeling reasonably secure, on July 28 he sent six 
men-of-war and thirty-six other vessels to the chancellor for 
their transportation. 

Further to protect from inroads the coast already occupied, 
Gustavus ordered a suitable naval force to cruise between 
Travemiinde and Riigen. Two days after landing, he took 
twelve hundred musketeers and a small body of horse, and 
started out southerly towards the region opposite Wolgast to 
reconnoitre the country. Arrived there, he found that the 
imperialists had built a fort on the island to protect the cross- 
ing. Reconnoitring the rear of the fort from the water, 
and sending back for a force of four thousand men, and all 
the horse which had already got mounted, Gustavus prepared 
to take the place ; but the imperial garrison retired to the 
mainland. 

On July 11 Gustavus left a thousand musketeers in the 
fort, and with three thousand foot and twenty-five hundred 



160 



FIRST OPERATIONS. 



horse set out to sweep Usedom clear of the enemy. The 
imperialists had built two forts to protect the passage from 
Usedom to Wollin across the Swine inlet. On the Swedes' 
approach the garrison fled over to Wollin, burned its boats 




Oder-Elbe Country. 

and the Wollin defenses, and retired to the back of the 
island. Gustavus managed to get boats, put across to Wol- 
lin, garrisoned the fort, and made after the fugitives as far 
as the Divenow inlet, but was too late to prevent their burn- 
ing the bridge across it. Having thus secured the mouths 
of the Oder, the king returned to headquarters in Usedom. 



ADVANCE ON STETTIN. 161 

No sooner landed than Gustavus incorporated in his army 
five thousand of the garrison of Stralsund. He had made 
good progress ; for not only did his possession of Stralsund, 
Usedom and Wollin secure the mouths of the Oder, but it 
gave him an almost certain claim to Stettin, the capital of 
Pomerania, still in the hands of Duke Bogislav. The entire 
coast of north Germany, save Stralsund, the island of Kugen, 
what Gustavus had taken and Stettin, was held, however, by 
the imperialists. Happily, Wallenstein was away, and no one 
made any sensible effort to arrest the Swedish advance. 

Pomerania is divided into two parts by the Oder, and 
Stettin, from its position, was a natural capital of the duchy. 
It had been besieged by the imperialists, but without success. 
General Savelli was in the country southeast of Stralsund, 
while Conti was on the west bank of the Oder. When the 
imperial generals saw that the Swedes had actually landed, 
they retired, Savelli to Anklam and Conti up the Oder to 
Garz on the left and Greifenhagen on the right bank. This 
gave Gustavus a chance to thrust himself in between the two 
parts, and he made arrangements to advance on Stettin. 

In April, before leaving Sweden, the king had sought to 
influence this well-fortified city in his behalf, and we have 
seen that Stettin had stoutly defended itself against the impe- 
rialists. While Conti was lax, Gustavus was active. He left 
Colonel Leslie in command of Wollin, General Kagg of Use- 
dom, and both under Kniphausen, to whom was committed 
the general supervision of the territory so far taken ; he 
detailed officers to patrol the coast to secure all possible 
landing-places ; and went in person to the southern part of 
Usedom near the Swine, to collect boats on which to ship a 
suitable force for an advance on Stettin. On July 18 he had 
seventy-four companies, eight thousand seven hundred and 
twenty-three men, ready to be shipped. On July 19 they 



162 



WANT OF SUPPORT. 



were put aboard such vessels, fifty-one in number, as were 
of suitable draught to sail up the river. Next day the fleet 
made Stettin by noon, and Gustavus landed part of the 

troops near the castle of Oder- 
burg below, where he took up 
a good position. 

One would expect to see the 
Evangelical powers of Germany 
unite to receive Gustavus with 
open arms. Nothing shows their 
supineness more than the fact 
that, save only Stralsund, — 
and this was held by his own 
garrison, — not a city, not a 
prince, not a circle, did aught 
to welcome the champion they 
had called. Every one waited 
to see how his perilous under- 
taking would result, before com- 
mitting himself to the Swedish monarch's support. It was 
an ill beginning ; had not Gustavus been of a buoyant nature, 
he might have faltered now ; but worse was yet to come. 

Pomerania would have liked to remain neutral, and 
Bosislav tried his old tactics to influence the Swedes to leave 
him so ; but Gustavus would none of it. Colonel Damitz, 
the commander of Stettin, under orders of the duke, declined 
to admit the Swedes ; in fact, threatened to fire on the flotilla 
if it should approach closer. He sent a drummer as bearer 
of a message, who was speedily turned back with answer that 
Damitz should come himself, as the king of Sweden was not 
in the habit of recognizing messages from men of regimental 
rank. The colonel came with some ambassadors from the 
duke, but they had no authority to allow the occupation of 




Stettin. 



THE "WHITE BRIGADE." 163 

the city; nor was any headway made until the king told 
Bogislav in so many words, at an interview which was shortly 
held, that he would countenance no neutrality on the part of 
the Germans, and that he had made suitable arrangements to 
take Stettin by force if not willingly yielded. Neither would 
he tolerate delay. " Every procrastinator is not a Fabius," 
said he. Gustavus already divined that the anticipated Ger- 
man support would not be forthcoming, and he proposed to 
handle this lethargic temperament without gloves. Stettin 
was given up. 

The Swedish troops, owing perhaps to the lateness of the 
hour on that day, did not march into Stettin through the city 
gates, but through some incomplete defenses, and took formal 
possession on July 20. As the imperial forces were gather- 
ing near by at Garz, Gustavus would not prejudice his posi- 
tion by a minute's loss of time. 

A treaty was concluded by which Swedish influence was 
made predominant in all matters, commercial and political, 
and three thousand men of the Pomeranian garrison of 
Stettin, under Damitz, were taken into the Swedish service 
as the " White Brigade." They proved to be excellent troops. 
The city of Stettin was garrisoned by three regiments and 
three companies of the Swedish guard. Having paid a goodly 
sum of money, Bogislav was permitted to resume nominal 
sway in Pomerania. The real control remained with the 
Swedes. 

This acquisition of Stettin was a vast gain for Gustavus, and 
an equal detriment to Ferdinand. So far the foothold had 
been e;ot without the loss of a man. Gustavus had secured 
his base of operations, and there shortly came an accession of 
troops from Prussia, from disbanded men who had served with 
Mansfeld or under the Danish flag, and from other sources. 
The conditions were such that a man could earn his bread as 



164 CAREFUL ADVANCE. 

a soldier with greater safety from the perils of war than as a 
farmer, and many sought refuge in the ranks. These new 
enrollments ran the effective of Gustavus' army up to twenty- 
five thousand men. 

After having thus yielded to Gustavus, Bogislav could 
scarcely make his peace with the emperor, though he with 
good right claimed that the imperial troops had abandoned 
him. Pomerania was pronounced rebellious, and the cruelties 
of the imperial forces were redoubled, a fact which added to 
Gustavus' welcome as a possible deliverer. 

About this time there are said to have been several attempts 
to assassinate the Swedish king, prompted by fanatical Roman 
Catholics ; but such matters have no special interest for us 
here. 

Gustavus' habit was to secure his every step. A notable 
engineer, he put his knowledge into daily practice. Stettin, 
in lamentable condition, was at once taken in hand, and its 
fortifications strengthened according to the best art. Leslie 
had been ordered to do the like by Stralsund, as well as to 
fortify Bergen, the chief city of Rugen, to restore the works 
at the ferry, to erect forts at several important places, to make 
strong the camp at Peenenmnde, and to fortify all the villages 
on Usedotn. Wollin and Cammin opposite were to be placed 
in a state of good defense ; the Divenow to be held by redoubts ; 
and the bridge to the mainland to be rebuilt, and strengthened 
with a bridge-head. 

The works of Stettin were extended to beyond Oderburg, 
with trenches, redoubts and well-devised lines, and near Oder- 
burg was erected a large camp. In four days, by using the 
entire laboring population, the work was substantially done, 
and the army quartered there, except the three garrison regi- 
ments in the town. 

Gustavus had brought only foot to Stettin. The cavalry — 



SECURING EACH STEP. 165 

thirteen companies under Colonel Teuffel — had been ordered 
to follow with one thousand musketeers, by way of the bridge 
at Wollin. The march of Teuffel was somewhat delayed ; 
and Gustavus, growing anxious, sent out a scouting party to 
see what had become of the column. In this party was an 
officer who had formerly been an imperialist. He now 
deserted, and gave the enemy all the news he had been able 
to gather ; but though the imperialists broke up on July 23, 
to intercept Teuffel, this officer headed them off and reached 
camp in safety. 

To celebrate worthily his successful landing Gustavus 
appointed July 23 as a day of prayer, and it was duly 
observed throughout the army. 

While it is true that Gustavus had strongly established 
himself on the Oder, there was still a deal left to be desired. 
The imperialists held the whole country into which he had 
thus driven a wedge ; they extended in a huge semicircle 
around his position at Stettin, from Colberg on the east, which 
was held by a big detachment, to Wolgast on the west, where 
troops were assembling ; while the camp which they had estab- 
lished above Stettin, at Garz and Greifenhagen, allowed them 
to make a diversion on any point along the Oder — say Pblitz, 
or the mouth of the Ihna — from which they might cut off 
the Swedes from Stralsund and the Peenemiinde camp. 

The town of Damm, opposite Stettin, was an important 
point commanding the east branch of the Oder. On July 22 
Gustavus sent Count Brahe with his squadron to seize the 
place ; and this drew within the Swedish lines the entire Oder 
stream and the mouth of the Plone River. As an outpost a 
fort was begun between Stettin and Garz, and large stores 
were accumulated in Stettin. Damitz was told off to take 
Stargard, which capitulated after a short struggle. Treptow 
and Greifenberg were shortly after taken ; Damitz seized 



166 A CLEVER OPERATION. 

Sazig in the beginning of August ; and Naugart and Plate 
were captured. This series of operations gave the Swedes 
the possession of the territory inclosed by the Oder, Plone 
and Rega rivers, and cut Colberg off from Garz and Greifen- 
hagen. Each place taken was strengthened and garrisoned. 

In reconnoitring towards Garz on one occasion, Gustavus 
again subjected himself to undue risk. He rode ahead with 
an escort of twenty horsemen, followed by a second detach- 
ment of seventy, and entering a defile not previously explored, 
he fell into an ambush, his escort was overpowered, and he 
himself was captured. His captors did not know him, and as 
good luck would have it the rear squadron rode up in season 
to rescue him. It was by mere chance that he had not been 
cut down. 

Gradually the king extended his grasp towards Oxenstiern 
in Prussia, whom he ordered to send an able officer to occupy 
the Stolpe country, while he himself proposed to invest Col- 
berg. Riigenwalde, by a lucky accident, was seized by a force 
of three small Scotch regiments from Pillau, under Colonel 
Munroe. This body, sent out on another errand, had been 
shipwrecked ; but by a combination of daring and good sense, 
Munroe contrived to turn ill into good fortune, and seized the 
town. He won warm commendation from the king. 

On the other hand it is related that an enterprising Swedish 
colonel conceived the project of a sudden attack on an out- 
lying post of the enemy's at Garz ; but, not possessing the 
virtue of silence, his plan leaked out, the enemy heard of it, 
and the attack was beaten back with loss. Though the officer 
brought in two stands of colors, the king gave him a sharp 
reprimand on the score of allowing his plan to become known. 
No courage or good conduct could excuse an idle tongue, 
said he. 

Quite as important as the closing in on Colberg was to 



DIFFICULTIES. 167 

reach out overland towards Leslie in Stralsund. Gustavus 
was theoretically well placed, with Oxenstiern on his left and 
Leslie on his right ; but practically he was not certain in his 
communications with either. Only by water could he surely 
reach them. The imperialists still held Uckermunde and the 
Peene country, Anklam, Wolgast and Greifswalde. Espe- 
cially Anklam was important, as it threatened Usedom, and 
here, on Gustavus' landing, Savelli had taken up his stand. 
But the imperialists were lacking in wisdom. Lest Gustavus 
should advance south from Stettin, the bulk of the forces in 
the Peene country were drawn into the Garz-Greifenhagen 
position, and Gustavus ordered Kagg from Usedom to occupy 
Anklam. So little could he understand the fatuity of the 
imperialists, that in the same breath he cautioned Kagg 
against a possible ruse de guerre. Anklam was taken and at 
once fortified ; though as the population was not favorable to 
the Swedes, the work was slow. 

Uckermunde was also occupied; and Barth, near Stral- 
sund, fell to Gustavus without effort. Wolgast, one of the 
very important places, as it held the key to the road from the 
Swedish camp at Peenemunde to the continent, capitulated 
to Kniphausen, July 28 ; but the garrison retired to the 
castle, and held out with stubborn courage till August 16. 
Greifswalde seemed no longer tenable for the imperialists; 
and yet it held out. 

The result of these manoeuvres was practically to control 
the coast from Stralsund to Wollin on one side of the Oder 
mouth, and the shutting in of Colberg on the other. 

Still Gustavus' occupation was far from being a perfect 
one. His main army lay in three detachments : his own at 
Oderburg and Stettin ; Kagg's basing on Usedom, as a link 
in the chain ; Kniphausen's on Peenemiinde or Stralsund. 
Until all three were so placed as to be able to act as one 



168 A HEROIC DEFENSE. 

body, Gustavus would not rest content. Nor would the pos- 
session of Anklam suffice. Unless the Swedes held the line 
of the Tollense, they could scarce present such a front to 
Savelli as to prevent his puncturing their defense. And 
though Stolpe alone would not control Farther (eastern) 
Pomerania, this section might wait. Hither (western) Pom- 
erania was of greater importance, and this the king set out to 
occupy. 

Such, then, was the first problem before Gustavus could 
venture on a march to Mecklenburg, which was one of his 
early projects. Kagg had already got a footing on the Peene, 
but as the imperialists might at any moment move on him, or 
on Kniphausen from the Mecklenburg garrisons, because they 
held the fords over the Tollense at Treptow and Demmin, 
Gustavus gave Kniphausen instructions to move forward on 
all places in his front ; while Kagg was so to operate as to 
seize the line of the Tollense and prevent Kniphausen from 
being taken in flank while he pushed out from Stralsund. 
The joint operation would forestall reinforcements to the 
places they might attack. 

A small Swedish outpost had already been pushed as far 
as Clempenow, and on August 12 Savelli, from Greifswalde, 
where he still was, sent a detachment to watch it. So soon 
as he heard of the fall of the Wolgast fort, he himself broke 
up from Greifswalde, and at the head of nearly all his force 
marched, by way of Demmin, on Clempenow, receiving 
on the way a reinforcement from Garz. On August 28 he 
stormed Clempenow. The garrison of barely a hundred 
men — far too small a force to put where it was — defended 
itself with true Swedish heroism ; nearly the whole number 
fell ; one officer and six men surrendered. This gave Savelli 
control of the Tollense region, and he at once strengthened 
Demmin, Loitz and Clempenow, while he garrisoned Trep- 



A SLAUGHTER. 



169 



tow, Neu-Brandenburg and Friedland. By this salient, basing 
on the Tollense and with apex at Greifswalde, the Swedes 
were thus held back to the coast, and Kniphausen feared that 
Savelli would push on Anklam. 

But Savelli had another idea. It was not so much a stra- 
tegic success as a momentary triumph he desired. The small 
and unprotected town of Pasewalk was held by a hundred and 
fifty Swedes as an outpost to Stettin. It should have been 
occupied in greater force, but Gustavus felt that he needed 
all his troops in Oderburg, especially as he was organizing a 
movement to Mecklenburg, and was reluctant to eat up his 
aggregate in garrisons. For the moment, indeed, he was in 
Stralsund ; and it is possible that he did not know how small 
a force there was. Savelli sent to Pasewalk a body of a 
thousand men, and on a foggy morning in early September 
the imperialists surprised the place, of whose condition they 
had learned by the treachery of some townsmen. The citi- 
zens who were on duty fled at the first assault ; and the 
Swedes were left to defend themselves in scattered detach- 
ments against the overwhelming force. Nothing could be 
done to save the place. They fell, arms in hand, to the last 
man, and the town was burned to the ground. 

The Swedes and imperialists could boast of about even 
luck, but the Swedes had illustrated the noble qualities 
infused into them by their monarch. 

On the other side of the Oder, Oxenstiern was at the head 
of the reserves in Pillau and Elbing. To open proper land 
communications with him, and to afford safe transportation 
for reinforcements and victual from there, Cammin and Col- 
berg had still to be taken. The duty of clearing the country 
between the Oder and the Elbing region was now intrusted 
to Kniphausen, with whom Oxenstiern cooperated. Accord- 
ing to the then military idea, that every strong place should 



170 SAVAGE CONDUCT. 

be either taken or observed before any advance could be 
made beyond it, this was no easy business. 

It bad been originally agreed between Bogislav and the 
imperialists that the two most important fords of the lower 
Oder, Garz and Greifenhagen, should remain in the hands of 
the Pomeranian troops. On Gustavus' landing, Conti had 
forcibly demanded admittance to these places ; the command- 
ants yielded, and moving in, Conti strengthened the works, 
and imagined that he was after a fashion blockading Stettin. 
Astride the river, he lay strongly intrenched in the Garz 
camp on the left bank of the Oder, connected with the 
right bank by a bridge and a bridge-head, whose approaches 
were covered by the little town of Greifenhagen. Though 
his strength did not warrant Conti in interfering with the 
king's operations on the coast line and lower Oder, yet Garz 
and Greifenhagen were really the gates of Brandenburg, and 
merely to hold them was a benefit. All Conti pretended to 
do was to ravage the neighboring country, and to attempt to 
throw succor into Colberg. At the same time a small impe- 
rial force was assembling in western Mecklenburg. 

It is no part of our province to detail the fiendish devasta- 
tion, burning, rapine and murders of the imperial troops. 
Scarce a valuable within reach escaped these licensed thieves, 
scarce a woman escaped their lust; not a home but was 
broken up, not a family but was ruined. The elector 
of Brandenburg issued an edict calling on all persons to 
arrest marauders, or, failing ability to do this, to shoot them 
down. But the peasantry was helpless. What could an 
unarmed countryman do against prowling ruffians armed to 
the teeth ? 

In early August, under Christian William, the dispossessed 
administrator, who had secretly returned, Magdeburg rose 
in revolt against the imperial rule and declared in favor of a 



MAGDEBURG. 171 

Swedish alliance. The uprising was not cleverly managed, 
nor had Gustavus, unprepared for distant business, desired 
such early action ; and no sooner had Christian William 
taken the first step than he called on the Swedes to help him 
take the second. Gustavus sent him Colonel Falkenberg, 
with instructions to do all that was possible to put Magde- 
. burg in a state of perfect defense, and hold it for the Prot- 
estant cause. The king was preparing to march to Mecklen- 
burg; but Magdeburg was another thing; it was but one 
factor in his larger calculations, not the main objective of a 
movement. Nor was the road thither open to him. Just 
now the question of good winter-quarters was occupying his 
thoughts. To extend his possession of the coast, so as to 
gain a foothold on the Elbe and parley with Hamburg and 
Liibeck, was on his programme, but not yet reached. Mag- 
deburg was important, but it was not the one important 
thing, and it was far removed. Christian William looked at 
the Swedish plan of campaign from the narrow standpoint of 
his own interest ; Gustavus kept the whole theatre of war in 
his eye. 



eyS& 




Pikeman of Thirty Years' War. 



XIV. 

GUSTAVUS ATTACKS THE ENEMY. SEPTEMBER TO 
DECEMBER, 1630. 

Mecklenburg had been given to Wallenstein, and Gustavus proposed to 
reinstate the dukes, as well as reach out towards Liibeck and Hamburg, Mag- 
deburg, Hesse-Cassel and Lauenburg. He left Horn on the Oder, returned 
to Stralsund, and headed a column on Rostock and Wismar. He captured 
Ribnitz, but as the enemy threatened his holdings south of Stralsund, he 
advanced no further, and returned to his "bastion." Tilly now replaced Wal- 
lenstein, whose arrogance had given general dissatisfaction, and hosts of the 
latter' s disbanded men enlisted with the Swedes. The king returned to 
Stettin, whence he dispersed a large imperial force near Demmin, and shortly 
after visited the siege of Colberg, from which he had beaten back several relief 
parties. Though contemplating an advance to the Elbe, he deemed it wise to 
complete his bastion first, and not to close the year without some handsome 
stroke ; he made careful preparations to attack Greif enhagen and Garz, fell 
suddenly on them, carried them by storm, and drove the imperialists headlong 
up the Oder towards Ciistrin. This was a marked success. The king now prac- 
tically held the entire coast line of Pomerania, and out to East Prussia, and had 
a wedge firmly driven into Germany along the Oder. His standing for the 
coming year was good, if only some of the German princes would join him. 

So soon as Gustavus had made his base secure, he contem- 
plated a movement into Mecklenburg to restore his cousins, 
the dukes, whose territory had been given to Wallenstein for 
his services against northern Germany ; to open up connec- 
tion with the duke of Hesse-Cassel, who, so far, was the only 
German prince who had volunteered active aid, with the 
administrator of Magdeburg, who asked for assistance, and 
with the duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, who promised it. Liibeck 
and Hamburg were also on his programme ; and while the 
route proposed was not direct, it was the only one he could 



MOVE ON MECKLENBURG. 



173 



pursue without the permission of the electors to cross Bran- 
denburg and Saxony. The king had been up to Wolgast and 
Stralsund, but had returned early in September. 

The imperialists held Wismar and Rostock, towns which 
Gustavus was anxious to secure, as this route would enable 
him to provision himself for the winter and to keep the impe- 
rial forces from the coast near the lower Oder. Before mov- 
ing towards Mecklenburg, Gustavus made a reconnoissance to 
ascertain whether he could push the enemy from Garz. But 
he found their camp so strong that for the moment he declined 
the attack. It looks as if it would have been wiser to dispose 
of the imperial general in his front before undertaking an 
advance apparently so eccentric as one towards Mecklenburg. 
But Gustavus saw that as Conti was bound to remain, like a 
mole, buried within his fortifications, it was safe to disregard 
him ; he recognized the danger in the enemy's holding Ros- 
tock and Wismar, which ports were necessary to his scheme 
for controlling the shore of the Baltic so as to exclude an 
inimical or even neutral fleet ; he believed that a handsome 
diversion elsewhere would aid eventual operations on the 
Oder ; and he must carefully consider the matter of winter- 
quarters, for which purpose Mecklenburg was well adapted. 

General Gustavus Horn had, in August, brought reinforce- 
ments from Finland and Livonia, and him the king left with 
a large part of the army in Stettin, giving him orders to act 
on the defensive, forward what reinforcements he could col- 
lect, and in case of being attacked by overwhelming odds to 
retire towards his chief. He might use his time in making a 
diversion on Greifswalde, which ought to be had before spring, 
so as to keep communications open between Stettin and Stral- 
sund. Should the Garz army attempt an operation in force 
towards the king, Horn was to let the Greifswalde project go, 
and march to his assistance. 



174 



NO GERMAN AID. 



The king left Stettin by boat, September 4, with three 
thousand men, and reached Wolgast the next day. He 
expected to take over some troops from Teuffel and the Fin- 
landers, and calculated that the "Hamburg" and "Lubeck" 
regiments, with some forces from Prussia, would give his 
column not far from nine thousand foot and four thousand 
horse. But he had pitched his expectations too high. Pur- 
posing to move by sea on Rostock, it not only turned out 
that there were not ships enough, but the reinforcements from 
Prussia were not at hand ; there was a deal of sickness in 
camp, and supplies and money came in slowly. The enemy 
was growing stronger in Garz, and Teuffel was needed in 
Stettin. Worse still, apathy reigned in a population which 
should have risen en masse to welcome Gustavus; the Ger- 
mans had seen their hope so constantly fail, they had been 
so woefully ground under the imperial heel, that they dared 

not afford aid and comfort to their 
new champion. 

It was September 9 when Gus- 
tavus reached Stralsund. The 
troops followed six days later, 
and were embarked ; but rough 
weather holding them aboard for 
nearly three weeks, about every 
sixth man was ill, and the cavalry 
well-nigh exhausted. Under stress 
of these adverse circumstances, 
Gustavus substituted a land inva- 
sion for the one by sea, and put 
his men and material ashore. 
From Stralsund the column headed for Mecklenburg, the 
frontiers of which were stoutly held by Savelli. Passing 
Barth, the Recknitz was reached, where in the morass made by 




Ribnitz. 



RIBNITZ TAKEN. 175 

the river near its month lay the village of Dammgarten, 
while on the further side of the river, in Mecklenburg, ap- 
proachable by a ford from Dammgarten, was Ribnitz. The 
country had been wasted by the imperial forces ; so much 
so that the king was not only called on in many places to 
distribute corn to the famishing peasantry, but to refrain 
from victualing in others. He paid in coin for all that the 
soldiers needed and could collect. 

Dammgarten, though possessing a tower of some strength, 
was held but by ten men, who at once gave it up, and on 
September 25 General Baner marched in. In Ribnitz were 
one hundred and fifty foot and two hundred horse, and 
the ford was protected by a redoubt in the marsh, with a 
ditch twenty-five feet wide and fifteen feet deep, a palisaded 
wall, eighty men, and a number of guns. Two smaller 
redoubts flanked the main one. Expecting the fleet to co- 
operate in taking Rostock and Wismar, Gustavus had no 
siege-guns with him ; bad weather still kept the ships at 
Stralsund, and only the light fieldpieces were on hand. To 
avoid this redoubt, Gustavus threw two pontoon bridges 
across the river near the mouth, and though the imperial gar- 
rison sought to disturb the work, on the 26th it was ready, 
and next day Gustavus appeared before Ribnitz. 

The enemy's horse came out for a skirmish, but meeting a 
bold front they retired towards Rostock. The foot resisted 
for a short hour, when the gates were blown open by petards, 
the place entered, and the imperialists taken prisoners. The 
heavy guns having arrived, the garrison in the redoubt which 
had refused to surrender was battered out. A foothold in 
Mecklenburg was thus obtained, and the troops were given a 
short rest in Ribnitz. 

Here the king learned that the imperial forces were assem- 
bling in the Demmin country, where Montecuculi — later so 



176 ROSTOCK. 

distinguished — had arrived with a body of horse ; and believ- 
ing that they were about to follow him into Mecklenburg to 
head off his further advance, he ordered Horn to send him 
all the troops he could spare, keeping in Stettin and Anklam 
only what was needed for defense. 

Meanwhile on October 2, with one thousand men, Gusta- 
vus set out to capture a small but strong fort near Wiistrow, 
on the inlet known as the Binnensee ; next day the garrison 
surrendered, and the ground so far occupied was duly strength- 
ened. 

The imperialists had formerly got possession of Rostock 
by a ruse. It was guarded only by its citizens, and the impe- 
rial troops asked permission to march through the place to 
save an inconvenient circuit. Once in, they remained, and 
held the town for Wallenstein. It was a place of impor- 
tance ; this port and Wismar once secured by the Swedes, 
they would control the entire coast from Stralsund to 
Liibeck, on the friendship of which city Gustavus placed 
considerable reliance. Ribnitz was a sort of outwork to 
Rostock ; but the capture of the latter place would con- 
sume time ; the situation in the Demniin region in the centre 
of his line appeared to require the king's personal attention 
more than a siege on an extreme flank ; and he renounced 
his present design upon Rostock and turned to other busi- 
ness. 

While Gustavus was threatening Mecklenburg, the impe- 
rialists had not been idle. Conti had tried the strength of 
the Stettin works, but was driven back with a loss of three 
hundred men ; and some slight exchanges occurred between 
foragers, with attempts on Datum and Gollnow, and on Buch- 
holtz near Damm. To watch Gustavus' operations so as to 
join him if necessary, and to conduct the small war thus 
forced upon him, kept Horn busy enough. 



THE FIVE-COLUMN PLAN. Ill 

Gustavus had a singularly fertile brain, and his correspond- 
ence details a variety of plans which from time to time he 
considered, generally rejecting all but that which was at the 
moment most available. Though the matter has no bearing 
on the manoeuvres which now ensued, it is interesting to fol- 
low out the king's ideas. His general scheme before pushing 
the imperial army to battle — always his ultimate object — 
was to stimulate the activity of the friends of the cause, and 
to encourage the arming of the Protestant population all over 
the theatre of war. He hoped from available resources, the 
Netherlands, Prussia, Poland, Livonia, as well as Germany, 
to increase his aggregate force to seventy or eighty thousand 
men, not counting allies. With this strength he had consid- 
ered a specific scheme of moving in five different armies for- 
ward from along the whole coast line, Colberg, Stralsund, 
Liibeck, the Weser and Bremen, in more or less concentric 
lines, upon the heart of Germany. This was an apparently 
dangerous division of forces, warrantable only on the assump- 
tion that some of these columns would be those of allies 
whose active aid he could not otherwise hope to obtain, and 
who would for the time being assist in a negative if not a 
positive way. In effect it was to be an operation on two 
lines : one through central Germany and one up the Oder, 
straight on Vienna. 

This five-column plan is spread out in a letter to Oxenstiern 
from Ribnitz, dated October 8, 1630. Horn and Teuffel, says 
the king, should have forty-six thousand men, march up the 
Oder, holding Brandenburg and Silesia ; the king with forty- 
two thousand, the " Royal Army," would base on Pomerania 
and Mecklenburg ; the fourth should be a Magdeburg army 
of ten thousand men, whose task should be the Elbe country ; 
the Hanse towns, led by the archbishop of Bremen, should 
cooperate with Hamilton and Leslie, both of whom were 



178 OXENSTIERN'S PLAN. 

expected to raise considerable forces. These columns, a hun- 
dred thousand and over strong, would, thought the king, be 
sure to compel a peace. This was a sanguine view of the 
case, and though it was based on a strength which Gustavus 
was fairly warranted in believing that he could raise during 
the coming winter, it was perhaps too rose-colored a scheme ; 
and to do Oxenstiern justice, he saw this aspect of the plan, 
and told the king that he would find his means unequal to it. 
The chancellor was, unquestionably, an able man, much more 
conservative than the king, and his best adviser. His weak- 
ness lay in his sometimes leaning towards a defensive policy, 
and with all his strong sense, he lacked the divine afflatus. 
His own plan, which in this same month he worked out with 
a great deal of care, was to garrison Pomerania with twelve 
thousand men ; to project a column of fourteen or fifteen 
thousand men along the Oder through Silesia, under Horn ; 
while the Royal Army should consist of over thirty thousand, 
and be manoeuvred to meet the imperial forces on the Elbe. 

The king in this instance gave heed to Oxenstiern's ideas, 
especially as the late harvest in Sweden had not been up to 
the usual mark, and taxes lay heavily on the people. His 
own plan had been but tentatively drawn up ; for, long 
before it coidd be inaugurated, there came about a marked 
change in the existing conditions, very much in his favor, 
and still he did not attempt to carry it out. 

A congress in Ratisbon to devise means to put an end to 
the war in Germany had been sitting nearly six months, and 
it ended, in November, 1630, in the emperor's investing 
Count Tilly with supreme command in the place of Wallen- 
stein, against whom the Catholic potentates had conceived a 
great prejudice, for his unmeasured assumption and the utter 
license of his troops. The result of this change was that a 
large part of the army, enlisted for service under Wallenstein's 



WALLENSTEIN DISPLACED. 179 

personal command, was disbanded, and the total imperial forces 
were reduced to some seventy thousand men, of which the 
bulk were in southwestern Germany, or engaged in the war in 
Italy. Thus in the early part of the German campaign, the 
emperor was unable to meet Gustavus' invasion with suffi- 
cient forces. Considerable numbers of these disbanded men 
enlisted under Gustavus' banner ; and it is as wonderful a 
thing to say of the king that he made good soldiers of men 
spoiled by Wallenstein's fearful indiscipline, as to tell of 
Hannibal that he made out of the riff-raff of southern Italy 
soldiers who could stand up against the legions of Marcellus 
and Nero. Thus reinforcements came from an unexpected 
quarter .; and Falkenberg's men began to come forward from 
Holland. Had Gustavus intended a definite adherence to the 
five-column plan, he would have been in better shape to carry 
it out than in October he could have hoped to be. 

It appears singular to us that upon the displacement of 
Wallenstein the disbanding of substantially all the imperial 
army should follow. But the method of raising troops at 
that day was peculiar. Wallenstein no doubt had, with each 
regimental commander, a personal contract under which the 
latter served and received pay for himself and his men ; and 
this contract fell when Wallenstein ceased from command. 
Many who had been in the imperial service before may have 
remained as a nucleus of a fresh army ; many may have been 
sent in small bodies to other armies ; but most of the men 
were mustered out with their general, and were at liberty to 
enlist where they would. It was all one to them. 

The chief complaint made by every member of the Congress 
of Ratisbon was the ill behavior of Wallenstein's forces, 
from whose depredations friends and foes alike had suffered ; 
and after his dismissal, orders were issued to keep the men 
under severe restraint ; but troops which have once enjoyed 



180 VICTORY NEAR DEMMIN. 

a loose rein cannot be fully brought in band ; and Germany 
was never freed from the worst horrors of war until her ter- 
ritory was occupied by Gustavus ; nor indeed after the king's 
death was humanity in war an element recognized by his 
successors, or if recognized, enforced. 

At the time of Wallenstein's dismissal, it is said that Gus- 
tavus approached him through Count Thurn to negotiate for 
his services ; but this will be referred to later. 

Gustavus definitively gave up his five-column scheme. He 
was not ready to launch out on so broad a manoeuvre. Taught 
by the apathy of the Protestant princes, his caution came to 
the surface, as in his German campaigns it so often and so 
felicitously did ; he choked down the Yasa recklessness, — as 
Charles XII. was never able to do, — and concluded to narrow 
his operations to the completion of his bastion, to concentrate 
instead of parceling out his forces, and for the nonce to 
operate on some point in the Tollense line. This looks like a 
marked descent from his larger scheme ; but it was just this 
caution, method, exactness, which Gustavus was to teach the 
world. His base was not yet perfectly secure, and he delayed 
bolder operations until he should have made it so. We shall 
see him in rapid action before many months. He selected 
Demmin as his objective, and left Baner with some three or 
four thousand troops to blockade the place, and to hold the 
territory between it and the Recknitz River, while he returned 
to Stettin with four thousand men. Shortly after, learning 
that six thousand troops under Savelli had marched to the 
relief of Demmin, he broke up thither with a force of four 
thousand men, met the imperialists in the vicinity of the 
place, engaged them, and, by the greater mobility of the 
Swedish infantry and its dashing courage, defeated and drove 
them back to Rostock with loss of their entire artillery and 
train and many standards. 



SIEGE OF COLBERG. 181 

Here again was a brilliant feat of arms, the details and the 
exact locality even of which are unknown. Records were ill 
kept in this era. Were it not that the bare facts are suffi- 
ciently vouched for by the Swedish dispatches and the impe- 
rial records, we should be tempted to set down some of 
these successes as mere paper- victories. But Gustavus was 
quite free from that particular weakness which induces a man 
to claim a victory or hide a defeat. His mind was too com- 
prehensive to seek for such adventitious aid. It is we who 
lose by not knowing the details ; the victor himself loses 
nothing. 

Gustavus returned to Stettin. During his absence Schaum- 
berg, the successor of Conti, had made a further useless 
attempt to take Stettin, and had then sent a force to release 
Colberg from the Swedish blockade. At the moment, this 
was one of the most important places along the coast. The 
king's initial plan was to extend his base so as to include the 
whole Baltic shore, much as Alexander deemed the whole east 
coast of the Mediterranean essential as a base from which 
to advance into Persia. The Swedes already held a goodly 
part of the shore line, and Colberg, a strong fortress, was 
indispensable to complete it. The operations so far had 
isolated the town, and cut it off from Garz ; but so long as it 
was held by an imperial garrison, it threatened the left flank 
of the Swedish line, as well as communications with Oxen- 
stiern in Prussia ; and even Gustavus was not yet free from 
the prejudice of the day with regard to fortresses. 

Colberg was held by Colonel Mors, and blockaded by Colo- 
nel Sperreuter. On September 23 the imperialists at Garz 
sent five companies of cavalry to make their way into the 
place ; but Horn heard of their presence, headed them off, 
and compelled them to return by a long circuit. The garri- 
son feared its ability to hold out. 



182 ATTEMPT TO RELIEVE COLBERG. 

Kniphausen, who was now in charge of the Colberg region, 
expected to operate mainly with troops to come from Oxen- 
stiern. Towards the end of October Horn ascertained from 
deserters and scouts that a marked stir in Garz indicated a 
movement in force towards Colberg. He strengthened Goll- 
now, and sent word to Kniphausen to hurry forward the 
oncoming Prussian troops to Belgard or Corlin, and occupy 
the line of the Persante. Kniphausen was active. He made 
Schievelbein the rallying-point of all arriving troops, and 
threw several companies into it ; but the Prussian troops were 
much delayed. 

On November 7 Horn got news of the actual march of a 
heavy column from Garz in the direction of Colberg. Delay- 
ing a day lest the manoeuvre should be a mere feint to lure 
him from Stettin, Horn marched by Gollnow and Greifenberg 
to Treptow. Instructed of his purpose, Kniphausen, still on 
the Persante, left a suitable force under Colonel Hepburn to 
hold this position, cautioned Sperreuter to stand firm, and 
contain the garrison of Colberg, and himself marched to 
Treptow, which he reached November 10. From here the 
two Swedish generals moved to Rossentin near Colberg to 
await the enemy. 

The imperialists had made a big circuit to avoid detection, 
and on the night of November 10 their column reached 
Schievelbein. Here Colonel Munroe held head against 
their attack, and they swerved off towards Colberg. Keep- 
ing out his patrols, Horn was well advised of their move- 
ments, and they advanced until they found that Horn stood 
athwart their path. Discouraged, they turned to retire, but 
Horn followed and gave them battle. A heavy fog prevented 
the possibilities of good management, and after desultory 
fighting, Horn, who had accomplished his aim, fell back to 
the Persante, and the imperialists towards their base, their 



OPERATIONS OF PAPPENHEIM. 183 

attempt to relieve Colberg having proven a dismal failure. 
Lest in his absence his camp should be attacked, Horn then 
returned to Stettin by the direct road. 

The movements of the Swedes in Mecklenburg and Pome- 
rania had so far been parts of one great whole. From Bib- 
nitz Gustavus was reaching out towards Liibeck and project- 
ing an operation towards the Elbe. The duke of Saxe- 
Lauenburg, a small principality on the lower Elbe, was pre- 
paring to join him, while Magdeburg, further up the river, 
stood as an allied outpost in front of this right flank. As Gus- 
tavus progressed with his movement on Bibnitz, Magdeburg 
loomed up in his mind as a suitable point on the Elbe for 
him to occupy in force. But it was not to be. Christian 
William, the administrator, was unfortunately not the man to 
second Gustavus' broad plan, even in so far as his one city 
fitted into it ; and Lauenburg proved too weak to accomplish 
his aim. After a short period of success the latter succumbed 
to Pappenheim in a battle at Batzburg, — a failure that drew 
the fire of Liibeck, which had been recruiting for the king. 
These new factors in the problem made it doubtful 
whether Gustavus Could accomplish any strategic good by 
pushing forward to the Elbe at the present moment. To 
entertain an army might be difficult, as the season was get- 
ting late, and the financial question was not an easy one. 
Troops and material arrived slowly from Prussia, and an 
advance meant to consume large forces for garrisons. The 
enemy had reinforced the troops in Mecklenburg, and to 
advance would open to attack the newly conquered bastion. 
Already somewhat reduced by labor and sickness, the army 
ought soon to be given its winter rest. 

As he could place no reliance on German aid, Gustavus 
was convinced that he must concentrate his efforts. Yet his 
instinct as a soldier called on him to end the campaign by 



184. ADVANCE ON GARZ. 

some stroke worthy of his reputation. It was as much a 
matter of moral effect as of material gain that he was aim- 
ing to compass, to show that the Snow King had come to 
Germany on no child's errand. But how? By advancing 
towards the Elbe he could make no sensible gain, and not 
to win was of itself failure. On studying the entire situation, 
he determined to return to Stettin, to draw the enemy from 
Garz and beat him in the field, or to attack him where he 
stood. Kniphausen still held for the advance to the Elbe. 
Horn and Teuffel were of Gustavus' opinion, but they coun- 
seled speed, lest the enemy should retire to Frankfort and 
intrench his winter-quarters. 

Gustavus had returned to Stralsund. Oxenstiern was 
ordered to forward cavalry as soon as possible ; Kniphausen 
was drawn on for troops for Stettin ; Baner was to complete 
the works near Ribnitz, garrison it, and then join Gustavus ; 
the infantry to be sent via Wolgast to Horn ; Gustavus him- 
self, with the cavalry, would march to Stargard, be joined by 
Sperreuter and the Prussian cavalry, making a total of thir- 
teen thousand five hundred foot and six thousand horse, and 
with these the king purposed to move on Garz. 

All this was admirably planned. But Oxenstiern wrote 
tnat he could only send the Prussian troops by detachments, 
and Kniphausen reported that he could scarce spare a hun- 
dred men. For a moment Gustavus was uncertain what to 
do ; then his courage rose to the occasion, and he determined 
to go on with the plan, be his force more or less. 

It was at this time that he heard of the enemy's failure to 
relieve Colberg. On November 16 he reached Greifenberg, 
and here Horn, Kniphausen and Baudissin were ordered for 
consultation. As a result, Horn was instructed to remain 
near Colberg ; Baner and Ake Tott were drawn in from 
Mecklenburg to reinforce him ; Gustavus returned to Stettin. 



COUNCILS OF WAR. 185 

On November 21 lie reached the city, and heard sundry 
rumors of a renewed attempt on Colberg. He scarcely 
believed this probable, for the enemy, after the late experi- 
ence, would be unapt to break up with a small force, and a 
large one would at this season have difficulty in victualing ; 
but he notified Horn to instruct the population along the 
probable route to drive their cattle to a place of safety. The 
imperialists, however, were contemplating a movement, in the 
belief that the Swedes would not expect one. So soon as 
Gustavus satisfied himself of the fact, he ordered Horn from 
Greifenberg down to the line of the Ihna, to take up a posi- 
tion between Stargard and Gollnow and hold the fords, and 
to draw, if essential, from Baner's and Dargess' troops. On 
December 1, while Horn was carrying out his instructions, 
he received new ones from Gustavus, who had ascertained 
that the proposed movement was delayed or postponed, that 
only five or six thousand foot remained in Garz, and that, 
owing to scant forage, the cavalry had been cantoned in 
various villages on the east side. Here was an opportunity 
for a stroke. Gustavus could either collect his cavalry and 
fall smartly on the enemy's scattered horse ; or he could call 
in from Horn all available forces, join them to his own, 
and with this column attack the depleted Garz intrench- 
ments. He summoned Horn, Kniphausen and Baudissin to 
Gollnow for a conference. 

Gustavus was one of the men who belies the old military 
saw that a council of war never fights. Having sought the 
opinion of his marshals and thus become familiar with all the 
facts, he himself decided, and always for a vigorous policy. 

It is not usual to detail the to and fro manoeuvres of troops 
under the orders and counter-orders given by the command- 
ing general as the kaleidoscopic game changes under his eye ; 
only the marches or attacks finally decided on are wont to be 



186 IMPORTANCE OF STRALSUND. 

mentioned, while the intermediate period, during which the 
commander is fencing to discover his enemy's weak guard, is 
ignored ; but it is interesting now and then to enter into even 
petty details ; for all operations, however large, are made up 
of these, and it is the general who gauges accurately the mean- 
ing of the information brought in by his scouts, and who 
then orders skillfully, that succeeds on the chessboard of war. 
Gustavus was by no means certain of the outcome of the 
attack he proposed to deliver ; but to make provision for an 
unsuccessful result and then to put his whole soul into the 
work was natural to his character. He had determined that 
the campaign should not end until he had forced a battle on 
the enemy, but he recognized the dangers which might follow 
failure. Like all his utterances, his letter dated December 5, 
to John Casimir, commending Sweden and his own wife and 
daughter to his care in case of disaster, is affecting. And 
his instructions to the Swedish people were to the last degree 
explicit. When Tott and Baner were ordered away from 
Stralsund, Generals Sten Bjelke, Rynnig and Soop were left 
in joint command, — a curious division of authority which 
largely obtained all through the era of which we are treating. 
Eighteen hundred and fifty men were left in Stralsund, and 
Anklam, Wollin, Cammin, Uckernmnde, Barth and Ribnitz 
each had a garrison, — the total of garrisons in places already 
captured running up to ten thousand six hundred men. To 
these joint commanders Gustavus gave orders, in case of dis- 
aster, to look well to Stralsund, — so that it might be at all 
hazards kept safe for Sweden. Should they need it, they were 
at liberty to draw in some or all of the garrisons of adjoining 
towns ; but they were in no case to lose courage or to give up 
Stralsund. The command in Stettin, where forty-four hun- 
dred men were left in garrison, was given to Colonels Carl 
Baner and Leslie. Early in December the available troops 



IMPERIALISTS POORLY OFF. 187 

were got together ; Tott's and Baner's regiments were ordered 
in from west Pomerama, Horn's corps and other troops from 
east Pomerania. Some twenty-five hundred horse came from 
Prussia and, added to the force from Stettin, the king col- 
lected eight thousand foot and six thousand horse, ten siege- 
guns, each drawn by twenty-four horses, and a number of 
field-pieces. Part of the force was to go by land from Damm, 
where they rendezvoused, part by water on the fleet, which 
had been all along lying in the Oder at Stettin ; and after 
careful inspection, on December 24 the start was made, and 
Gustavus set out to drive the enemy from his intrenchments. 
That the imperial forces in Garz were in a wretched plight 
from cold and hunger, and in a worse state of discipline, — 
actually in no condition at this season to withstand the 
Swedish army, — justified the selection by the king of this 
moment for moving upon them, though he had no entirely 
reliable evidence to go upon, but rather judged from his 
military experience and instincts. It was in truth so. Count 
Schaumberg, the new commander of the imperial forces on 
the Oder, gave to his chief, Tilly, the most distressing reports 
of the condition of the army, in which, said he, there were 
not over four thousand footmen fit for service. The cavalry 
was better, but half was dismounted and all inefficient. He 
begged for an inspector who should report the state of the 
forces turned over to him by Conti, and with which he was 
held to show results. It was the lack of victual which had 
driven him to send away the horse to the outlying districts, 
even so far as the Neumark. In the Swedish camp matters 
were on a better footing. The home troops were in good 
shape ; the newer recruits were getting into order ; all were 
warmly clad, fairly well fed, full of an excellent spirit, and 
in condition for any work. The difference between the old 
system and that introduced by Gustavus was pronounced. 



188 



THE ADVANCE. 



Colonel di Capua held Greifenhagen with some thousand 
men ; the rest lay in the camp at Garz. Schaumberg began 
already to think of retreat to Landsberg to defend the line 

of the Warta. He 
harbored fears that 
both it and Frank- 
fort might fall, and 
his retreat to Silesia 
be cut off, but he 
did not feel war- 
ranted in leaving 
his post without 
instructions from 
Tilly. He did 
not anticipate an 
immediate attack ; 
and his position was 
good though his 
troops were not. 

Greifenhagen lay 
on low ground be- 
tween the Reglitz 
and a line of hills which slope down towards it. These hills 
command the town, which had only a wall of no great strength, 
with a few towers but no flanking bastions, and a dry ditch 
protected by another light wall. 

The route of the Swedes lay along both sides of the Oder, 
and the army was accompanied by the flotilla and a flying 
bridge, to keep up connection between the separated wings. 
Marching on the right bank, the Swedish van reached Grei- 
fenhagen late in the evening, and after a smart skirmish, drove 
the imperialists within walls. Don Capua had no idea that 
Gustavus with his entire army was upon him ; he looked on 




The Attack on Garz. 



CAPTURE OF GREIFENHAGEN. 189 

the body as a mere reconnoissance. The Swedes camped over- 
night in a wood near by. Next morning all joined in a solemn 
Christmas-day service, and the attack was begun. Some of 
the siege-guns were hauled up to the highest hill, not a musket- 
shot distant from the town, and, protected by an infantry 
detachment, opened fire. In a short while a breach was made, 
and the king in person headed the assaulting party. Twice 
the Swedes were driven back, but on the third attempt the 
imperialists gave ground, and Don Capua, who had behaved 
with gallantry, was forced to turn from the fierce onslaught. 
But Leslie lay in wait in the rear of the imperialists, on the 
Oder, aboard the boats, and by a heavy fire drove them back 
on the Swedish line of musketry. Thus hemmed in, the 
entire force surrendered. Gustavus' loss was small ; that of 
the enemy was reported between one and two hundred. 
Startled from his fancied security, Schaumberg made up his 
mind to summary retreat, if possible towards west Pomerania 
to join the imperial forces on the Tollense, where, by a vigor- 
ous push, he might make the Swedes nervous as to their 
communications, and thus draw the fire of their advance up 
the Oder. 

Next day Gustavus broke up early and marched along the 
right bank towards Marwitz, near by which a fort protected 
the bridge to Garz. This bridge-head had a deep wet ditch 
and was strongly held. The king anticipated resistance, and 
the army marched on the place in order of battle. But the 
garrison did not even wait their coming. So soon as the van 
of horse put in its appearance, they withdrew over the bridge, 
burned it, and took up a position in a work on the further 
side. Out of this they were driven by the Swedish artillery, 
and thence retired to Garz. 

Schaumberg no longer delayed ; he could not reach west 
Pomerania, for the Swedes on the left bank were upon him. 



190 DEFEAT OF ENEMY. 

He burned the Oder bridge at Garz, threw his guns into the 
marsh, destroyed so far as he was able the public buildings, 
gates and defenses, as well as the victual he could not carry- 
off, and marched hastily away to the south, putting the torch 
to every village on the route, and leaving scarce a spear of 
grass behind. 

Cavalry under Baudissin was sent in pursuit, which cap- 
tured much material, said to have included three hundred 
wagons full of plunder ; and detachments were hurried on 
towards Ciistrin and Landsberg to cut the enemy off from the 
fords and bridges there. Following to Pyritz, Gustavus drove 
out the garrison, which fled headlong ; and Schaumberg 
retired rapidly up the left bank to Frankfort, and marched 
part of his forces to Landsberg on the Warta, to hold the line 
of that important river. The Swedes followed them up, and 
in several rear-guard combats inflicted considerable loss upon 
them, badly cutting up four of the best imperial regiments. 
The king headed direct for Landsberg, and it was lucky for 
the town that he did not know that it was in bad case, with 
few troops, empty magazines, twelve guns, and only eight or 
nine hundred- weight of powder. Ignorant of the facts, Gusta- 
vus did not attack ; moreover his men were weary, it was 
bitter cold, his own victual was getting short, and he feared 
imperial concentration on the line of the Warta, which would 
prevent his holding Landsberg, if taken. He retired to 
Konigsberg in the Neumark, where he rested his troops, call- 
ing on Horn with the foot and Tott with the cavalry to follow 
up and complete the rout ; while Leslie on the left bank 
should advance inland and seize Locknitz, Prenzlow and the 
Uckermark. Patrols were set along the river as far up as 
Schwedt. To be ready for further operations, if these should 
be forced upon him, Gustavus called for all available troops 
from Oxenstiern and Horn. 



A BRILLIANT GAIN. 



191 



Though the king's army had been much the better and the 
opposition had been weak, it cannot be denied that he had 
won a brilliant advantage. He had driven the enemy out of 
good intrenchments, at that day considered a distinguished 
feat of arms, and although the operations were neither bloody 
nor on a vast scale, they redounded greatly to his credit. All 
Germany rang with his praises ; in Vienna " they shook with 
fear." 



^ ^^£^ 




; Advance Pikes ! " 



XV. 

WINTER-QUARTERS AT BARWALDE. JANUARY, 1631. 

Gustavtjs had as yet no idea of the petty jealousies of the German princes. 
He had every right to expect the elector of Brandenburg to stand by him. 
But George William felt more hound to the emperor than to his religion ; he 
aimed at neutrality, but allowed the imperial troops what he denied the Swedes. 
Gustavus built a fortified camp at Barwalde, and housed his troops. Here 
Richelieu made a treaty to pay him for keeping thirty-six thousand troops in 
Germany, all mutual friendly states to have due protection, and no violent 
upheavals to be made. Tilly was on the Weser. On hearing of the capture of 
Garz, he started towards the Oder, but shortly returned and undertook, with 
Pappenheim, the siege of Magdeburg. The Protestants held a convention in 
Leipsic, and though Gustavus was in Germany at the request of many of them, 
there was no mention of the king in their deliberations. Anxious to complete 
his base on the Oder before he moved to the Elbe, Gustavus sought to aid Mag- 
deburg by threatening Frankfort, so as to draw Tilly away from there, and in 
February Tilly marched to the Oder. Some slight manoeuvring took place, 
but no serious operations, except that Tilly compelled the Swedes to raise the 
siege of Landsberg. Gustavus determined to draw him from the Oder into the 
open country. 

Gustavus' trials were about to begin. The military prob- 
lem was difficult enough ; but as yet the king had no idea 
of the complex network of paltry prides and jealousies, of 
private grudges and selfish interests, in which he would now 
be caught, and which would seriously hamper his best efforts. 
It is wonderful that he had the courage to enter upon any 
campaign in Germany, after tasting the difficulties which 
from the start beset him ; it is doubly wonderful that within 
two years he should have reduced to possession the whole 
land. 



A DROWSY POTENTATE. 193 

George William, the drowsy elector of Brandenburg, had 
repeatedly exchanged embassies with Gustavus, but not to 
offer assistance ; his one aspiration was to save his dominions 
from invasion. Neutrality was his only thought ; despite 
which he allowed the passage of Schaumberg's fleeing forces 
through his fortress of Ciistrin, — of itself the baldest breach 
of neutrality. Gustavus demanded equal passage. The elec- 
tor was between the devil and the deep sea. He must offend 
either Gustavus or the emperor ; and either was able to visit 
him with condign punishment. He began early in January 
with a declination to allow Gustavus to pass Ciistrin, on a 
number of trivial pretexts, mainly his duty to the empire ; 
the king answered by demanding actual possession of the 
fortress, instead of free passage; the elector must not, said 
Gustavus, shield the imperialists and prate of neutrality. 
Though Gustavus was long-suffering, when he acted it was 
without fear, favor or affection ; but it was difficult to say 
how far he might trench on the rights of Brandenburg, lest 
he should force George William into open enmity. He needed 
him as a friend ; he must keep him at least neutral. 

The imperialists had reassembled twelve thousand men in 
Frankfort, and as the elector persisted in denying the Swedes 
a passage through Ciistrin, Gustavus, unwilling to advance 
with this fortress and Landsberg in his rear, for the moment 
pocketed his wrath, and took up quarters at Schwedt, and at 
Barwalde, on the right bank of the Oder, at which latter place 
he constructed an intrenched camp, and housed his main force. 
He repaired the Garz works in order to keep open his Oder 
line ; blockaded Landsberg with four thousand men under 
Tott ; and sent out detachments to clean Brandenburg of the 
isolated plundering bands of imperialists which were overrun- 
ning the country and harassing a friendly population. He 
would have been glad to push on and relieve Magdeburg 



194 BUSY WINTER-QUARTERS. 

from Pappenheim's blockade ; but bis Swedes needed rest ; it 
was winter ; bis new recruits bad to be got into sbape ; and, 
above all, bis base was not yet free from danger. Sbould be 
marcb to tbe Elbe, bis line of operation would be open to 
interruption by tbe imperialists from Frankfort ; and indeed, 
in tbe present tone of tbe electors of Brandenburg and Sax- 
ony, be could not venture to cross tbeir territory. 

Gustavus bad good reason for self-gratulation. In six 
montbs tbe Swedes bad advanced from tbe seacoast to tbe 
line of tbe Warta, leaving in tbe emperor's possession, within 
tbe line covered by tbe Trebel-Tollense-Ucker, only Demmin 
and Greif swalde, and east of tbe Oder only Colberg ; these 
places were blockaded by his forces, and Baner lay on tbe 
frontier of Mecklenburg witb four thousand men. 

It is true that Gustavus had secured so easy a triumph 
against no well-organized resistance. Conti had been dis- 
tinctly unskillful ; and what with Wallenstein dismissed and 
his forces disbanding, witb Tilly far off in the Weser country, 
seeking to gather Wallenstein's men into the fold of the 
League, though the aggregate of the enemy had been large, 
only isolated garrisons and weak divisions bad been on hand 
to oppose him. He bad encountered more political than 
military opposition. With the true soldier's ardor, he had 
hoped for a battle ; but not only bad he met no real army 
in the field to outmanoeuvre and beat ; it took many weary 
months to force Tilly to the point of risking his master's 
cause in a general engagement. 

In the camp at Barwalde Gustavus lay in the early weeks 
of 1631, busying himself with recruitment and discipline, to 
prepare his men for more vigorous measures in the spring, 
and with urging the Protestant princes to concerted action. 
He issued a proclamation to all who had fled from imperial 
cruelties to return, and many did so. Contributions on the 



TREATY WITH FRANCE. 195 

country were regularly levied and paid for. Billeted soldiers 
were forbidden to ask more than bed, the right to cook at the 
general fire, salt, and vinegar to correct the bad quality of 
the water of the plains. 

To win the elector of Brandenburg's active help, Gustavus 
used his best endeavors, but this Protestant sovereign, and 
brother-in-law of the king, preferred an ignominious neutral- 
ity ; and — more discreditable still — the head of the Luther- 
ans in Germany, John George of Saxony, simply ignored 
Gustavus' advances. Such was the attitude of the men the 
king had come to aid. In George William's case it was 
hebetude ; in John George's it was jealousy. 

To counterbalance this, there was one real cause of con- 
gratulation. Richelieu plainly desired to cooperate with 
Gustavus. Former negotiations had failed, owing to certain 
formalities on which both parties could not agree. But on 
January 23, 1631, Gustavus and Louis XIII. concluded a 
five years' treaty, by which the king of Sweden agreed to 
maintain thirty thousand infantry and six thousand horse in 
Germany, against a payment of three hundred thousand 
livres (five livres equaled two rix dollars) for the past year's 
expenses, and a future annual subvention of a million livres, 
payable May 15 and November 15, in Paris or Amsterdam, 
at Gustavus' option. 

The other terms of the treaty contemplated protection of 
mutual friends and of the Baltic, the freedom of commerce, 
and generally the restitution of the status quo ante helium. 
In conquered territory Gustavus agreed to respect certain 
laws of the empire, and not to disturb the Catholic religion 
where he found it duly established. The treaty was to be 
open for any princes to join who desired to cooperate in the 
common cause. With Bavaria and the League neutrality or 
friendship should be maintained, if they would do their part. 



196 TILLY MOVES EAST. 

Count Tilly, now in supreme command of the imperial 
forces, lay on the Weser awaiting reinforcements from Italy 
and recruits from the League. Though he knew how worth- 
less were his lieutenants and troops on the Oder and the coast, 
he took no action to direct or relieve them. A slow, old-fash- 
ioned soldier, not able, if measured by the high standard, yet 
not without marked capacity in his way, Tilly was noted for 
never having lost a great battle. He had always waited for 
the advantage to be on his side before engaging ; but he was 
far behind the times in dealing with such an antagonist as 
Gustavus. Count Pappenheim had repeatedly urged his chief 
to head off the Swedes in overrunning the land, but to no 
avail. Tilly would not move till he got ready. 

Out of this inert mood he was rudely startled by the disas- 
ter to Schaumberg, who wrote that he had saved a bare four 
thousand foot and an equal number of horse ; and that it 
would be lucky if he could hold Frankfort and Landsberg, 
for the king was aiming at the roads to Silesia, and his own 
men were down-hearted to the last degree. On receiving 
Schaumberg's first intelligence, Tilly had broken camp ; on 
January 9 he was in Halberstadt ; January 13, in Calbe. 
His lax habit had lost him Garz and Greifenhagen. 

The Protestant princes, in the beginning of February, 
1631, assembled in Leipsic at the invitation of the elector 
of Saxony. There were represented the houses of Saxony, 
Brandenburg and Hesse, and some smaller principalities, as 
well as all the free towns. This body was convened to devise 
measures for withstanding the imperial tyranny, but it actu- 
ally accomplished nothing, and it is a marvelous fact that in 
their deliberations, which lasted two months, Gustavus was 
not even mentioned. The tone of the convention was given by 
the elector of Saxony, who still deemed it possible, by simple 
appeals to Ferdinand and without war, to bring back matters 



MAGDEBURG ATTACKED. 197 

to their original basis and to reconcile the Protestant and 
Catholic claims. The convention acted as if Germany was 
in a state of profound peace, instead of almost on the eve of 
political and social disruption. Except for what was said by 
William of Hesse, not a voice was raised which fairly repre- 
sented the disturbance which prevailed. In answer to all the 
advances of Gustavus, only a timid outside intimation was 
conveyed to him that, under favorable conditions and on his 
own pledges to do and to refrain from doing all manner of 
uncertain things, the friendship and good-will of the Evan- 
gelical principalities might perhaps be extended to him. 
John George still believed Gustavus to be an unessential 
factor in the problem, and still hoped that he could sway 
obstinate, high-handed Ferdinand by meekly worded corre- 
spondence. For all the Protestant body paid any heed to 
him or his doings, Gustavus might as well have remained 
quietly in Sweden. Such were his German friends. 

Meanwhile, the imperial forces had been winning some 
successes in the Elbe country. Christian William, in the late 
summer of 1630, had armed Magdeburg, Halberstadt and 
other neighboring towns, had driven the imperial forces from 
the region, and carried on an assiduous small war. But his 
success was short-lived. Pappenheim, with seventeen thou- 
sand men, having, as already narrated, surrounded the duke 
of Lauenburg and captured his army on the lower Elbe, 
returned and blockaded Magdeburg in September. 

This was not the first attack on this proud Hanse city. 
In the summer of 1629 Wallenstein, engaged in enforcing 
the Edict of Restitution, had laid siege to it, but mindful of 
the failure at Stralsund and of his own reputation, had 
accepted a ransom of one hundred thousand dollars, and left 
in September. Magdeburg then patched up a treaty, offen- 
sive and defensive, with the other League towns, — Ham- 



198 TREATY WITH MAGDEBURG. 

burg, Liibeck, Bremen, Brunswick and Hildesheim. In 
June, 1630, the ex-administrator got possession of the place, 
and made the treaty already mentioned with Gustavus in 
August, by which the king agreed to have a heed to the city 
in all its dangers, to defend it without cost, never to forsake 
it, or to conclude any peace in which it was not protected. 
No sooner was this treaty made than Pappenheim appeared 
before it, and opened his lines. 

The fact that such a treaty was made, and the additional 
fact that Magdeburg was captured and sacked before Gusta- 
vus could reach it, have been made the text of many accusa- 
tions against the Swedish king. It is a common allegation 
that before this disaster could occur, Gustavus was bound to 
inarch to tlie relief of the city. This is a charge easily made ; 
but there were many considerations for the king to weigh. 
He had but half won his base on the sea or the Oder, and he 
might not lightly prejudice it. Until he could, beyond a per- 
adventure, command the Oder from the line of the Warta 
north, and the entire territory back of the Trebel-Tollense 
line, he was scarcely justified in advancing inland. Accord- 
ing to all reports from Magdeburg, and to all military 
probabilities, the city could hold out against Pappenheim 
indefinitely, and, if Tilly joined him, against both for two or 
three months. The king had small doubt that he could keep 
Tilly in the Oder country by threatening Frankfort, the loss 
of which would open the road through Silesia directly to the 
hereditary possessions of the emperor. He was in constant 
communication with Magdeburg, and thought he knew 
whereof he spoke, and his letters to Falkenberg show his 
feelings in the matter with perfect clearness. Despite all 
that may be said, it remains true that Gustavus did what was 
humanly possible to succor Magdeburg. He may not have 
foreseen all the difficulties in his path when he made the 



TILLY REACHES THE ODER. 199 

treaty, but he was fairly justified in assuming that Magde- 
burg could resist a longer siege, and that it would not be (as 
it was) treacherously surrendered by the imperial party 
within its walls ; he sent one of his best officers to take com- 
mand, and money to raise troops ; and he received credible 
information that Tilly was on the point of abandoning the 
siege, as he actually was on the eve of the storm. Still more 
to the point, Gustavus could hardly anticipate the unreason- 
ing opposition of Brandenburg and Saxony ; he had the best 
of reasons for believing that he would have forced the enemy 
to battle long before Magdeburg should weaken ; and he was 
actually within a short march of the city when it was taken. 
It is not worth while, in view of Gustavus' life-work, to 
combat the statement that he deliberately abandoned Magde- 
burg to her fate. If any accusation be brought against him, 
it should be for miscalculation of what he could accomplish 
while Magdeburg held out. All this anticipates the narra- 
tion of the facts, but it is well to bear the matter in mind, in 
order to appreciate the king's operations between the date of 
the treaty and the fall of Magdeburg. 

In February, 1631, the main imperial army under Tilly 
finally made its appearance in Gustavus' front. The aged 
and rather inert generalissimo had been at fault in not sooner 
sustaining his forces on the Oder, but he was unused to the 
winter operations to which the Snow King's activity had forced 
him. ^.fter his ineffectual start for the Oder, he had been 
tempted to move to the assistance of Pappenheim at Magde- 
burg ; but when he heard how hard pressed Schaumberg was, 
Tilly began to fear for Silesia, should the line of the Warta 
be lost ; so he abandoned the Magdeburg scheme and crossed 
the Elbe at Dessau. Then via Treuenbrietzen and Saarmund, 
some twenty thousand strong, he marched on Frankfort, which 
he reached January 18, 1631. This gave the imperialists thirty- 



200 GUST AV US AND TILLY SPAR. 

four thousand men. Gustavus had succeeded in helping 
Magdeburg by drawing Tilly from its gates. 

From Frankfort, leaving a garrison of five hundred of his 
best troops in the place, Tilly marched to Landsberg, and 
compelled the Swedes to raise the siege and fall back to the 
main camp at Barwalde. The sturdy old warrior gave cer- 
tain indications of a readiness to draw the king, who had but 
twenty-five thousand men and many of these detached, from 
his intrenched camp to a battle in the open ; but he did not 
choose to assault the Barwalde works, nor was a special 
offer of battle made. Gustavus was engrossed with the Meck- 
lenburg problem. Until he should quite clear the imperialists 
out of the territory near the coast, he could not be satisfied 
of its security ; and to sustain Magdeburg in her courageous 
defense, he must advance from a base which could not be 
threatened. The antagonism of Brandenburg and Saxony 
made this all the more true. There was another idea lurking 
in Gustavus' mind : that a threat towards the towns still held 
by the enemy in Mecklenburg would draw Tilly thither from 
the Frankfort region, and afford him an opportunity to return 
and capture this city and Landsberg out of hand. These 
strong places were essential to the operations he contemplated 
between the Elbe and the Oder, but he could scarcely hope to 
get hold of them so long as Tilly was within their walls. And 
by luring Tilly to follow him, he might so manoeuvre as to 
get a chance of battle in the open, or of catching the impe- 
rial army at a disadvantage, while not affording the enemy an 
occasion to return to Magdeburg. 



Swiss Pikehead. (15th Century.) 



XVI. 

GUSTAVUS AND TILLY MANOEUVRE. FEBRUARY TO 
APRIL, 1630. 

With twelve thousand men Gustavus moved into the Demmin region. Tilly 
slowly followed on a southerly route. The king captured Demmin and several 
minor towns. Colherg shortly fell, and only Greifswalde held out within his 
bastion. He contemplated a movement on the Elbe, but Tilly showed signs of 
attacking his lines, and the king feared he might break through. Instead of 
so large a scheme, Tilly took Neu-Brandenburg, and, massacring the garrison, 
retired towards Magdeburg. Gustavus believed that a sharp threat on Frank- 
fort would again draw Tilly away from this ally, and in March, with fourteen 
thousand men and a large force of guns, he advanced up the Oder. Ciistrin 
fell, and Frankfort was taken by storm, with a number of general officers. 
This was a brilliant exploit, and for his lesson in audacity modern war is 
indebted to the Swedish king. Advancing on Landsberg, the place surren- 
dered. The bastion was thus pushed forward to the Warta, and the road to 
Vienna was open. Such a situation should have called Tilly away from Mag- 
deburg. Had not Gustavus felt it his duty to relieve the city, he might have 
advanced directly on the emperor. Tilly did indeed start to the relief of 
Frankfort, but being too late, headed back to Magdeburg. The Swedish hold- 
ing was -now a semicircle from Mecklenburg to Prussia, with a chain of strong 
places all the way, Frankfort in the centre. 

In pursuance of his design to entice Tilly away from the 
Oder, Gustavus left Horn in a camp at Soldin, with six cav- 
alry and six infantry regiments fronting towards the Warta, 
and under orders to hold the enemy to the Landsberg-Ciistrin 
line ; not to risk an engagement, but to act defensively 
against superior forces ; and to seize Frankfort and Lands- 
berg if the opportunity offered. Horn's reserves would lie 
in Pyritz, Stargard and Gollnow, so as to protect the Oder, 
the Neumark and eastern Pomerania. Should the enemy 



202 GUSTAVUS ATTACKS DEMMIN. 

go into winter-quarters, Horn might attack Landsberg and 
Driesen, the two most important points on the line of the 
Warta-Netze. 

On January 26 Gustavus himself set out with six cavalry 
and four infantry regiments, plus some Stettin battalions, in 
all twelve thousand men. Kniphausen, who commanded in 
the Stralsund region and was now besieging Greif swalde, was 
sent orders to be ready to join the king. Marching by way 
of Stettin, where he crossed the Oder, past Locknitz, which 
he took, Pasewalk and Waldeck, Gustavus left a small gar- 
rison in Prenzlow. At Neu-Brandenburg the imperialists 
capitulated February 2, and were paroled. The small gar- 
rison of Treptow retired lest it should be taken prisoner, and 

Clempenow was captured 
a day or two later. To 
hold these towns protected 
the proposed siege of Dem- 
min. It was cold winter 
weather, but the posses- 
sion of western Pomera- 
nia was too important to 
delay till spring. 

Demmin, anciently a 
strong place, had been re- 
paired by the imperial- 
ists. It was the apex of 
the Peene-Trebel-Tollense region. Savelli held it with seven- 
teen hundred men, while in Loitz, near by, lay six hundred 
more, and fifteen hundred in Greifswalde. Demmin was easy 
to fortify, and art had been called to the aid of nature. It 
was surrounded by a bastioned earthwork with a wide wet 
ditch and glacis ; and the vicinity was commanded by a field- 
work inclosing a strong tower, north of the town, on the left 




Demmin. 



TILLY FOLLOWS. 203 

bank of the Peene and surrounded by the morass made by 
the river. Tilly had told Savelli that he must hold the place 
at least fourteen days, as he had supplies and ammunition in 
abundance. That the marsh was frozen helped the besiegers 
somewhat. In addition to ordering Kniphausen to join him 
at Demmin with all his available foot and some siege-guns, 
the king had instructed Baudissin to march to Treptow with 
his cavalry ; and with eight hundred musketeers he went for- 
ward to reconnoitre Demmin. Torstenson with the artillery 
was to follow to Clempenow. 

The king saw that Loitz had first to be taken, for it stood 
like a detached work on the left bank of the Peene, and pos- 
sessed a castle of some strength. This was accomplished, 
Savelli was cut off from Greifswalde, and the road from 
Stralsund was opened for Kniphausen, whom the king again 
admonished to bring his batteries. 

Tilly met this march of Gustavus by leaving Schaumberg 
in the vicinity of Frankfort with eight thousand men, and 
starting himself with twenty thousand for Mecklenburg. 
Perturbed at the situation, he had delayed some time. If 
he left Frankfort, he feared that Horn would seize on Lands- 
berg ; if he stayed, that Gustavus would advance across the 
Havel on Magdeburg. Finally he chose the least dangerous 
course and set out early in February. He could break through 
Gustavus' lines at Prenzlow, Neu-Brandenburg, or some point 
on the Trebel-Recknitz, if he wanted to go to the relief of 
Greifswalde ; or he could march straight to the Havel, if he 
proposed to attack Magdeburg. His course was plain. During 
the ensuing manoeuvres Tilly was seeking to draw Gustavus 
away from Frankfort and the open road to Silesia, as well as 
to prevent his marching to the relief of Magdeburg; and 
Gustavus' aim was to keep Tilly from adding his army to the 
besieging forces at Magdeburg, and to take Frankfort and 



204 SAVELLI SURRENDERS. 

Landsberg from hini by a stratagem. On the direct road up 
the Oder the king had got possession of all the towns, so 
that Tilly was obliged to move his columns by a detour south 
of Berlin: via Beskow, Fiirstenwalde, Mittenwalde, Saar- 
mund, Brandenburg and Neu-Ruppin. This, to be sure, 
enabled him to cover the line of the Havel, which would head 
Gustavus off from Magdeburg ; but he was seriously delayed 
on his march by the opposition of several towns. 

The king learned of Tilly's march, from Horn, on February 
10. Selecting Malchin as a good outpost to prevent inter- 
ference with his operations against Demmin, he ordered 
Kniphausen and Baudissin thither; and meanwhile dis- 
patched Captain Moltke with thirty-six horse to reconnoitre 
the place. This officer managed to make the enemy believe 
that the king was close by with the Demmin army, and seized 
the town, though the garrison was thrice the size of his own 
force. For a mere scouting party, this was a pretty opera- 
tion, and opened the way for the approaching troops. On 
February 12 Gustavus marched from Loitz on Demmin, send- 
ing cavalry ahead to cut off Savelli from retreat. On the 
13th he reached the work on the left bank, whose garrison of 
Landsknechte retired to the tower. Out of this they were 
driven by mining, and rather than be blown into the air they 
surrendered, the men enlisting under the Swedish colors. 
At the same time approaches were opened and pushed on 
the right bank against Demmin. In two days Savelli con- 
cluded he had better make terms. He was allowed to retire 
with the honors of war, conditioned on his army and himself 
not serving in Pomerania and Mecklenburg for three ensu- 
ing months. Having yielded up a place which could have 
offered a long resistance, Savelli withdrew to Neu-Ruppin. 
Much artillery and a large supply of corn and forage 
fell to the Swedes. Tilly found grievous fault with his 



A STRONG CURTAIN. 205 

lieutenant ; he would accept, and indeed there was, no excuse. 
He desired to make an example of Savelli ; but this officer, 
who had friends at court, got off with a few months' arrest, 
and was later given higher employment. The capitulation of 
Demmin allowed free exit for all personal effects. Among 
these was the baggage of Quinti del Ponte, a deserter and 
traitor, who had made an attempt on the king's life, and 
in it the money he had received from his treachery. On 
being asked whether he would confiscate the stuff, Gustavus 
replied that it was included in the terms, and that he had no 
mind to take petty revenge on the man. 

In view of the Swedish successes all along the line, the 
Pomeranian Estates were now persuaded to raise ten thou- 
sand foot and three thousand horse to garrison the land, a 
help which released an equal number of Swedes for the 
field. Gustavus had surely deserved this first assistance. 

For the moment, and not anticipating much manoeuvring 
on Tilly's part, the king appears to have deferred his designs 
on Frankfort in favor of putting his men for needed rest in 
winter-quarters. Behind his curtain of strong places, he 
designed to clean up his work by the capture of Colberg and 
Greifswalde, and perhaps of Rostock and Wismar, and with 
nothing in his rear, the more safely advance to the relief of 
Magdeburg, and approach Hamburg and Liibeck. The pro- 
jected line of winter-quarters was to extend from the Oder to 
Stralsund : Baner in command of the right along the Trebel 
and Tollense ; Kniphausen at Neu-Brandenburg in the cen- 
tre ; Teuffel and Baudissin on the left, along the upper 
Ucker ; beyond the Oder, Horn. The strong places on the 
line were Ribnitz, Dammgarten, Tribsies, Demmin, Malchin, 
Clempenow, Treptow, Neu-Brandenburg, Prenzlow, Garz and 
Schwedt. East of the Oder the line would run parallel to 
the Warta-Netze. Near Wolgast were Kagg and Tott with 



206 TILLY ON THE WAR-PATH. 

the reserve cavalry. The king personally went to Stettin to 
oversee the whole or to plan new operations. Opposite this 
Swedish line lay the imperialists, with an irregular front 
from Frankfort to Magdeburg, and outlying forces in the 
Kostock-Wismar country. 

Not meaning to lie idle because he contemplated winter- 
quarters, Baner was instructed by the king to press the siege 
of Greifswalde from the south, but to have a heed lest the 
enemy should break through the line to relieve it. Tott was 
to help with his cavalry, and to lend a hand to Baner or 
Kniphausen, as needed. Now that he was quite cut off from 
the imperial army, Baner called on the commandant of 
Greifswalde to surrender, but Colonel Perusi refused terms 
and prepared for defense. 

Gustavus had seriously considered a march up the Oder 
through Silesia ; but the attitude of Brandenburg and Sax- 
ony held him back. Tilly's dread in this quarter was ill- 
founded ; but the old-fashioned soldier justly feared some 
operation which he could not fathom, and chose the Ruppin 
country as a good place from which to attack any novel 
problem. In going to Stettin the king left his lieutenants 
with some distrust ; but he had a right to believe that they 
could hold their own. Kniphausen was active in procuring 
information in his front, and late in February had come to 
the conclusion that Tilly was about to attack Prenzlow, so as 
to break through the line to relieve Greifswalde. Gustavus 
had the same notion, and cautioned the officers in command 
to be ready to concentrate to oppose any such attempt. 
Later indications were that Tilly was aiming at Neu-Bran- 
denburg, and Kniphausen sent notice to Baner and Baudis- 
sin. Like information was received by the king, who sent 
word to Baner to sustain Kniphausen, as he could do without 
weakening; his siege lines. On March 6 Baner reached Fried- 



FALL OF COLBERG. 207 

land, where lie was to await the king's further orders ; Bau- 
dissin had broken up towards the same place ; and the king- 
likewise prepared to move to Kniphausen's assistance. 

The siege of Colberg had been going on continuously for 
months under Boetius, and finally, on March 2, from lack of 
victual, Colonel Mors surrendered, marched out with the 
honors of war, and was given free passage to Landsberg. 
The fall of Colberg made available the bulk of the garrisons 
of the surrounding places in the Neumark ; Leslie was left 
in command of what remained ; the surplus force was ordered 
to Stettin, and on March 7 Gustavus, thus reinforced, reached 
Pasewalk. 

Meanwhile Tilly slowly advanced to Neu-Ruppin, found 
Savelli there with the Demmin garrison, and learned of the 
loss of Colberg. Thence he headed for Neu-Brandenburg. 

Gustavus had sent word to Kniphausen to hold Neu-Bran- 
denburg manfully (or, if he had to surrender, to make good 
terms), and he would within a few days either relieve him or 
undertake an operation to draw Tilly away. The fact was 
that Gustavus had begun to revert to his old plan of an 
attack on Frankfort. He did not believe that Tilly was 
merely aiming at Neu-Brandenburg. It scarcely seemed 
worth his while ; he concluded that the imperial general was 
concentrating for a dash on either Stettin or Greifswalde. 
The apex of the Stralsund-Greifswalde position is Demmin, 
and even should Neu-Brandenburg fall, it was no fatal loss, 
for the place could be got back later. It looks a little as if 
Tilly, angered at the loss of Colberg, was at this moment 
willing to come to battle with the king ; but Gustavus 
thought best to draw him away from his Mecklenburg lines 
by a diversion on Frankfort and Landsberg, convinced that 
he would follow. There was a greater gain here, and less 
danger in case of defeat. In pursuance of this plan, the 



208 MERCILESS MASSACRE. 

king ordered some of the troops east of the Oder to Krahnig, 
opposite Schwedt, and Torstenson and Carl Baner, with some 
artillery, bridge materials and victual, to a camp he had 
intrenched on the Oder between Schwedt and Yierraden. 
Purposing to call Baner to his own side, he left Horn in com- 
mand of the forces behind the Peene, Trebel and Recknitz, 
with orders to cover Wolgast, Loitz and Demmin ; to retire, 
if necessary, on Anklam and Stralsund ; and in case Tilly 
should advance on Gustavus, to follow him up, leaving only 
a small force behind him. 

The king miscalculated. Tilly paid no heed to his move- 
ments. He had indeed no deep design, but was looking for 
some small success. He was not active enough to be seduced 
away by able manoeuvring. From Neu-Ruppin, on March 
12, he reached Stargard, just south of Neu-Brandenburg. 
This latter was not a place which could be easily defended. 
Gustavus called it a " naked spot," and Kniphausen had not 
a single gun. Nor had he got the king's final orders ; the 
messengers had been captured ; and instead of capitulating 
honorably, the brave old man determined to hold on, and 
thrice refused Tilly's demand, replying that he would defend 
the town to the last man. 

Tilly began a furious cannonade, and kept it up two days, 
breached the mean walls with his artillery, and stormed the 
town March 23. The resistance was heroic ; the fighting of 
the Swedes surprised Tilly beyond measure. Quarter was 
neither asked nor given; four hundred imperialists fell; 
Tilly gave the town up to plunder, and annihilated the gar- 
rison. Every male was ruthlessly slaughtered, except Knip- 
hausen and three other officers. Outrage of every kind ran 
riot. Nothing was spared, — as a species of revenge for the 
capture of Demmin and Colberg ; but it was a sad contrast to 
the recent conduct of the Swedes under parallel conditions. 



BACK TO MAGDEBURG. 209 

It did the imperialists no strategic good, for Tilly saw no 
advantage in advancing farther. He was not a man to be 
encouraged by success, nor had he any surplus enterprise to 
boast of. 

Friedland is a bare twenty miles from Neu-Brandenburg. 
Why neither Ban6r nor Baudissin came to Kniphausen's aid 
is not explained. The error may have lain in the king's fail- 
ure to guess Tilly's rather blind design, and in orders a 
record of which is not on hand. 

When Horn ascertained the fall of Neu-Brandenburg, he 
withdrew the troops from Friedland, leaving only a garrison, 
broke down the bridge at Treptow, and retired to Demmin, 
to protect the approaches to Stralsund and Greifswalde by 
holding the fords of the Peene and Trebel. Tilly, on weigh- 
ing the difficulty of marching on either Stralsund, Greifs- 
walde or Anklam, and fearing that, by a sudden dash, Gus- 
tavus might seize the passage of the Havel, concluded to 
retire to Neu-Ruppin. When he did so, Horn returned to 
Friedland. 

A small compensation for the Neu-Brandenburg disaster 
shortly occurred when the rhinegrave met a detachment of a 
thousand horse on its way from Rostock to the imperial army, 
and completely destroyed it. 

Count Pappenheim had made to the elector of Bavaria 
many complaints of Tilly's dilatoriness, and about this time 
there came orders to Tilly to let everything lapse which inter- 
fered with the capture of Magdeburg. No doubt Tilly would 
have retired as it was, for without reason he became nervous 
about the Dessau bridge. He wanted to be near Leipsic, 
where the convention was being held ; and as his position as 
representative of both the empire and the League subjected 
him to contradictory instructions, he chose an operation which 
should suit every one's ideas, — the siege of Magdeburg. 



210 ADVANCE ON FRANKFORT. 

On Tilly's retiring from the Neu-Brandenburg holocaust, 
Gustavus imagined that he was aiming at Prenzlow, to march 
up the Ucker to the sea, interpose between Horn and him- 
self, and deliver battle to one or other ; he ordered Horn to 
march via Pasewalk to Lbcknitz, so as to be able at any 
moment to join him, while Carl Baner was instructed to make 
secure the works of Schwedt. Gustavus thus prepared to 
fight in one body and with a good camp in his rear. But 
when he ascertained that Tilly had retired to Neu-Ruppin, 
he gave up his defensive attitude, and struck so as to draw 
Tilly away from his now manifest intention to return to Mag- 
deburgr. He believed that a direct threat on Frankfort 
would do this, and sent Horn back to the command of the 
Stralsund-Stettin country, with orders to push the siege of 
Greifswalde, and to send a body of horse to watch the east 
side of the Oder. If he captured Greifswalde, he could 
make a move on Rostock, or threaten Mecklenburg in some 
other quarter. Baner accompanied the king. 

Just as the king was about to start, he heard that the impe- 
rialists from Landsberg had sent out a detachment and had 
captured Arnswalde. This moved him to speed. With four- 
teen thousand men and two hundred guns, on March 27, 
1631, he broke up from Schwedt, headed his column along 
both Oder banks for Frankfort, the main force on the left 
bank, and the flotilla and flying-bridge in company. The 
right flank and rear of the army was protected by the camp 
at Schwedt, as well as by flanking detachments. Baudissin 
led the column with the cavalry ; the king followed with foot 
and artillery. The horse scoured the country well to the 
west, and a detachment captured Oranienburg, to forestall 
a possible threat to the flank. On March 30 the column 
reached Wrietzen. 

Ciistrin was of the first importance. Gustavus had an 



A BOLD ASSAULT. 



211 




Frankfort. 



intelligent observer here, received frequent information, and 
knew all about the place. The commandant, Colonel Kracht, 
was speedily convinced of the uselessness of resistance, and 
gave up the place on demand. Continuing the advance on 
April 1, the outlying posts and scout- 
ing parties of the imperialists were 
encountered. On the 2d the army 
was in front of Frankfort. 

No sooner arrived than the king 
set about a siege. Some six thou- 
sand imperial troops were in the 
town, and a number of distinguished 
officers, Marshal Tiefenbach, Count 
Schaumberg, General Montecuculi 
and Colonel Sparre. They had de- 
termined on defense, and burned the 
suburbs. 

The Swedish army lay on the hills to await the fleet, and 
prepare material for the siege. Gustavus reconnoitred. On 
the first night trenches were opened, not without opposition. 
On April 3 three batteries were planted opposite the Guben 
gate, and three regiments posted opposite the Lebus gate. 
The fire from the batteries was effective, and a small breach 
was made. In the late afternoon a body of men was sent 
forward to capture the outworks, so as to drive the enemy 
within walls, or, as some authorities rather improbably state, 
an attack was begun by a junior Swedish officer on his own 
motion, and then followed up. However started, the Swedes 
advanced with exceptional gallantry, got through the ditch, 
clambered up the wall, tore down the palisades, and drove 
the imperialists helter-skelter from the town gates. But they 
did not stop here. Some musketeers planted ladders, reached 
the wall, and blew the gates down with petards. Nothing 



212 INTELLIGENT AUDACITY. 

could resist the fury of the soldiery. Every man met in arms 
was cut down ; seventeen hundred were killed, Count Schaum- 
berg among them, and one thousand were captured, including 
many officers ; a large amount of stores was taken. The 
town was given up for three hours to plunder, in retaliation 
for the massacre at Neu-Brandenburg ; but no citizen's life 
was taken. A part of the garrison made efforts to escape ; 
many were drowned in the Oder. A small part, including 
two general officers, escaped towards Silesia; individuals 
reached refuge even as far as Glogau. 

This capture of a walled city with strong defenses and 
heavily garrisoned, containing a number of capable military 
men, without waiting for a perfect breach, was an exceptional 
venture, and earned the Swedes great credit. The news 
spread fast, and the king hoped that the victory would influ- 
ence the German princes to join him. 

The modern art of war is indebted to Gustavus Adolphus 
for more than one lesson in audacity. It was well that the 
world should learn that bold assaults are justifiable ; and in 
this the Swedish, hero led the way. This capture of Frankfort, 
and especially the later crossing of the Lech and the assault 
on the Alte Veste, were object lessons of exceptional value. Not 
but what breaches had been stormed before Gustavus' time. It 
is not for ordinary boldness that he deserves credit ; but he 
should be awarded the highest encomium for doing those 
acts which in his era were condemned as foolhardy, and for 
showing the world that intelligent audacity is not of necessity 
rashness. 

From Frankfort, on April 5, Gustavus with all the horse 
and three thousand foot advanced on Landsberg. The van of 
dragoons drove before it the Croats, of whom many still 
infested the country, and inflicted heavy loss on these savage 
marauders. Out of twelve hundred, not two hundred got 



LANDSBERG CAPTURED. 213 

away. On April 7 the Swedes reached the vicinity of the 
town. Horn had been ordered to cross the river from 
Schwedt, and head for Landsberg, with all the force he could 
collect, to help shut in the town. He arrived the same day 
as the king. 

Gustavus had supposed that Tilly would take some vigor- 
ous action to relieve Landsberg, and ordered Ban6r to break 
down the Custrin bridge, to finish a redoubt already com- 
menced there and make it as strong as possible, and to hold 
Frankfort stoutly. This would head the imperial army off, 
as Tilly could not cross at Schwedt. Should he try Crossen, 
up river, Gustavus purposed to check him with his cavalry ; 
should he go as far south as Glogau, Gustavus would pay no 
heed to him, as he hoped in that case to be through with 
Landsberg before the enemy could reach it. 

Bane"r, with five regiments from Frankfort, joined the 
king April 15. On the same day operations were opened 
against Landsberg. The town lay in the valley, and pos- 
sessed a castle, and an outlying fort, on whose possession 
depended the security of the castle. Gustavus directed his 
artillery against the fort, and placed guns so as to take it in 
reverse. After no great interchange of fire, and the repulse 
of a sortie, a demand was made ; and, April 16, in pursu- 
ance of a short negotiation, the garrison of four thousand 
men surrendered, and received free exit on agreement not to 
serve for eight months. Crossen speedily followed. The 
Swedish left flank was thus abundantly secured, and the king- 
drew in the bulk of his forces to Frankfort. The road to 
Silesia was open. 

Now, had Gustavus, as is sometimes alleged, really been 
indifferent as to Magdeburg, would he not have chosen the 
plan long urged by Oxenstiern, and have himself advanced 
through Silesia on Vienna, instead as he did of intrusting 



214 SILESIA OR MAGDEBURG? 

this section to Count Horn ? Such an advance would have 
suited his paymaster, Richelieu ; it would have struck at the 
heart of his enemy ; he was justified by the neglect of the 
men he had come to help in looking solely to his own and 
Swedish interests ; he would have had a walk-over to Vienna, 
and have possibly made a brilliant coup. That, instead of 
the alluring route, he chose to turn back towards the men 
who needed help, but who said no thanks for what he ten- 
dered, is sufficient proof that he was faithful to the cause he 
had undertaken beyond what can be said of most great 
captains. 

Tilly had remained a long time inactive at Neu-Ruppin, 
and then started in the direction of Magdeburg. When he 
learned .that Gustavus had moved against Frankfort, he also 
turned that way, sending word to the place that he was on 
the road to relieve it ; but hearing at Brandenburg that he 
was too late, he sat down not far from Berlin to wait. He 
believed that Gustavus would either march on Silesia or back 
to Magdeburg, and he was unwilling to follow him to Silesia. 
His desire was to draw the king from the Oder towards the 
Elbe, so that he might engage battle with him on favorable 
terms ; failing which, to capture Magdeburg, and make such 
an example of it as would frighten the Protestants into sub- 
mission. But for some time he embraced no action. Not 
until Landsberg fell did he start for the Elbe. 

The king sent word of his wonderful success to Magde- 
burg, promised succor within two months, and said that he 
based his calculations on the belief that the town could hold 
out easily at least so long. 



XVII. 

MAGDEBURG. SEPTEMBER, 1630, TO MAY, 1631. 

Magdeburg had been well fortified by Falkenberg, whom Gustavus had 
sent thither. The Elbe bridge was protected by several forts, the walls made 
strong, and the city became a fortress. After taking Frankfort, as Tilly 
returned to Magdeburg to help Pappenheim, who had been there many months, 
Gustavus decided to march to its relief. But he was opposed by the electors of 
Brandenburg and Saxony. The former forbade the Swedes to cross his terri- 
tory, or to occupy the fortresses essential to the Swedish advance, until the 
king threatened force, when he reluctantly yielded ; even the danger .to Magde- 
burg would not induce the latter to permit a Swedish march across his land to its 
relief, though the imperialists had gone to and fro at will. As John George with 
forty thousand men held the balance of power, Gustavus might not provoke 
his enmity ; and believing with reason that Magdeburg could hold out several 
weeks longer, he urged his negotiations for passage. Meanwhile, the siege was 
sharply pushed. Falkenberg had twenty-five hundred men, Tilly and Pappen- 
heim thirty thousand, but the resistance was stubborn. Finally, Tilly, fearing 
the advent of the king, contemplated withdrawal ; but during previous negotia- 
tions, when the garrison was off its guard because an imperial herald was within 
walls awaiting answer to Tilly's ultimatum, an assault, aided by the treachery of 
citizens, was made on May 20, the place was taken, given up to plunder, burned, 
and forty thousand souls perished. This holocaust was properly charged by 
Gustavus to John George. 

In the light of his recent success, Gustavus might contem- 
plate an advance on the Elbe. His base was secure. There 
was no danger of interruption from Poland, and Silesia was 
open to him. Tilly gave up hope of regaining the Oder, but 
for a while he lay near Brandenburg, and sent parties out as 
far as Crossen. He threatened Berlin, but the citizens put 
the city in a state of defense, burned the suburbs, and flatly 
denied him victual ; and on the fall of Landsberg he marched 



216 TILLY'S MILITARY FAITH. 

towards Magdeburg, and crossed at Dessau. The Oder gone, 
he felt that he must hold the Elbe, and he was impelled to 
wreak on Magdeburg a vengeance for the loss of Frankfort. 
Tilly was still a slave to the old method, in which the deter- 
rent virtue of cruelty was an article of faith. It is proven 
by modern investigation that the wanton slaughter and burn- 
ing at Magdeburg were not by his command, but the fact 
remains that Tilly was a representative of the old school, one 
of whose tenets was that the sack of a city was a species 
of right to which the soldier had a claim. In this light he 
cannot be absolved from the barbarism exhibited in that 
unfortunate city. 

Now was surely Gustavus' time to relieve Magdeburg, and 
he resolutely set about it. The military danger of such an 
advance was past, and the king's assurances of speedy succor 
were founded on this fact. But Gustavus had as yet no con- 
ception of the political difficulties which lay athwart his 
path, and the military and logistic difficulties were by no 
means all surmounted. Victual was hard to get ; Pomera- 
nia was slow in filling her quota ; remittances from home and 
abroad came in after tedious delays ; the cavalry had run 
down by excess of the winter's hard work and deprivation 
so as to be appreciably below that of the enemy in effective- 
ness. So much was this the fact that the king was called 
on for the first time to punish depredations, and yet the 
troops — horse and foot alike — suffered at times almost to 
the verge of mutiny. " Many excuses, little support," com- 
plained the king. 

But all this was of small account compared to the difficulty 
of bringing the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony to a 
helpful attitude. Gustavus could not begin an unauthorized 
march through the territory of either, lest the prince con- 
cerned should fall upon his rear ; and he was able to make 



ARGUMENT BY CANNON. 217 

no impression upon tliem. They were not small potentates 
like Bogislav ; should Brandenburg and Saxony join hands 
to resist the king, his helpfulness to the cause of Protestant- 
ism was at an end. The business called for diplomacy, not 
force ; and George William had already been antagonized by 
the Ciistrin matter. 

On April 21 the king himself was in Ciistrin, where he 
worked out his plans for the Magdeburg expedition. His 
next step must be to the fortress of Spandau, as a secondary 
base to secure his advance. Horn was left in command on 
the Oder, with headquarters in Ciistrin, and was to make up 
a new army from the recruits collected in Pomerania and 
arriving from Sweden. A garrison was placed in Landsberg, 
and a rendezvous was given for May 1, at Kopenick, to all 
troops destined for the army of the Elbe. 

It was hard to argue George William out of his neutral- 
ity ; commissioners effected nothing ; a personal interview 
in Berlin proved of no avail. Until Gustavus, in a fit of 
righteous indignation, declared almost at the cannon's mouth 
that unless Ciistrin and Spandau were voluntarily yielded, he 
would occupy them by force, he made no headway. It was 
manifest that he must rely on possession, not promises. 
George William could expect no imperial aid ; he placed no 
reliance on Saxony ; he believed himself in Gustavus' mili- 
tary power ; he weakened, and finally came to terms. Control 
of both Ciistrin and Spandau was given to Gustavus until the 
Magdeburg incident should be closed ; but the vacillation of 
the man is no better shown than in the fact that George Wil- 
liam wrote an apologetic letter to the emperor, excusing his 
action, and stating that he had caused as great a delay as 
possible. A pretty champion of his faith indeed ! 

No sooner in Spandau than, on May 8, Gustavus started 
for the Dessau bridge, in the hope that he would have less 



218 ALL ROADS CLOSED. 

trouble with the elector of Saxony. His back was scarcely 
turned when George William alleged fresh difficulties — 
mostly his duty to the empire — in delivering up full control 
of Spandau, where Gustavus had left but a small body of 
men. The opposition amounted to nothing, but was an addi- 
tional source of worry. Compulsion alone was an argument 
with this shortsighted potentate, who, from a species of moral 
cowardice difficult to understand, still clung to his pre- 
tended neutrality. It was hard to rupture the old imperial 
tie, even for religion. 

When Tilly finally retired from the Oder country, Gus- 
tavus intended promptly to follow him up ; but the road open 
to the imperialists had been completely barred to him. Bran- 
denburg once opened, he must reckon with Saxony; and 
John George would not allow him to cross his fords at Wit- 
tenberg or Dessau. The only other road was via Branden- 
burg and Mockern, through a country which had been so 
completely devastated that it gave an ill promise to the Swed- 
ish commissariat, which was at ebb-tide ; and moreover 
the bridge at Magdeburg was already in the hands of the 
besiegers. He could not well advance to the aid of Magde- 
burg from any point lower down the Elbe ; for the bridges 
were scarce, or had been destroyed ; the boats had all been 
seized by the enemy ; the river was wide ; he had no pon- 
toon-train, and to secure means of crossing would consume 
much time ; the vicinity he must occupy had been devastated, 
so as to be unfit to sustain operations ; and wherever he 
should attempt to cross, it must be in the face of a superior 
enemy. 

Every avenue to his objective seemed closed ; and while 
anxious to relieve his faithful ally, Gustavus could scarcely 
be held — as a matter of good faith or a matter of common 
sense — to compromise his whole military scheme, built up 



STUBBORN JOHN GEORGE. 219 

with endless care and caution, by so moving as to endanger 
his communications, magazines and points d'appui, to risk 
an uprising of Brandenburg and Saxony in his rear. 

His difficulties can scarcely be overestimated. Most Prot- 
estant princes still looked at him as a second Christian of 
Denmark, who, at the proper time, might sell their cause to 
save himself ; they not only refused his advances, but declined 
to raise troops for the common cause. The electors of Bran- 
denburg and Saxony could not have done less for him had 
they been open enemies. In truth they would have proven a 
simpler factor in the problem had they met him sword in 
hand. 

Gustavus represented to John George with the utmost 
frankness the condition of Magdeburg, as also his own and 
Tilly's relative strength, and by correspondence and embas- 
sies, begged this head of the German Protestants for aid in his 
perilous venture. The elector would scarcely deign to answer ; 
and answers, when they came, were argumentative solely. 
The diplomatic interchanges are interesting, but they do not 
come within our province. That John George forbade a 
march through his territory suffices to explain Gustavus' 
long delay in carrying out his promise to stand by the city 
of Magdeburg in its distress. Tilly outnumbered him ; the 
elector of Saxony, with an army of forty thousand men, held 
the balance of power ; the elector of Brandenburg in his rear 
was not to be relied upon, — and to be brief, Gustavus was 
not a Charles XII. Had he been so, he might have relieved 
Magdeburg — perhaps — while the dull-witted electors were 
gaping at his boldness ; but he would not have been of the 
stuff to save Protestantism in Germany. Happily for us, 
he was better balanced, and would not risk Sweden and the 
future of the faith on a hair-brained advance, however bril- 
liant. He felt constrained to remain on the Havel, along 



220 A PAPER CAMPAIGN. 

which he advanced as far as he might, until he could over- 
come the inertia of the Saxon elector. 

Putting aside politics — in this case John George with his 
forty thousand men — the military problem could be readily 
solved. Three or four stout marches by way of Dessau, the 
destruction there of Tilly's force, the building of a bridge- 
head to preserve his line, and the summary attack of the 
enemy besieging Magdeburg were among the possibilities. 
But if we assume that Gustavus' duty was merely a military 
one, and that he was bound to disregard all political compli- 
cations, we can scarcely imagine his pushing far into the tan- 
gled network before him. All great soldiers have succeeded 
because they made politics subserve their military scheme ; 
and so did the Swedish monarch. We may imagine the bold 
and rapid advance which some historians have told us it was 
his duty to make, to redeem his pledge to Magdeburg ; we 
may picture its success ; but we shall have created a paper 
campaign, and a paper hero, we shall not have depicted the 
Gustavus who saved the Reformation in Germany, and who 
was the father of modern war. Gustavus was not great 
because he was either cautious or bold ; he was great because 
he knew when to be cautious and when to be bold. We 
shall see him bold enough by and by. 

To return to Magdeburg. Colonel Falkenberg had been 
sent by Gustavus to take charge of its defense in the fall of 
1630, and had entered the city October 19. He found the 
situation far from bad. The enemy had less than six thou- 
sand men, was merely observing the city, and Falkenberg felt 
confident that he could hold the place for many months. He 
was warmly welcomed, and his influence was at once felt. He 
took full command, — the administrator retaining only his 
body-guard and a sort of advisory control, — and began 
recruiting outside and repairing the works within. 



THE DEFENSES OF MAGDEBURG. 



221 



The Elbe at Magdeburg has a number of islands close 
together. The bridge over the river utilized these, and a 
bridge-head stood on the right bank. Perceiving that the 
enemy, by attacking 
the islands from up 
river, could cut off the 
bridge, Falkenberg 
built a big work at the 
south end of the most 
important one, and for 
the several sections of 
the bridge redoubts. 
To strengthen the 
bridge - head on the 
right bank, a work 
called " Trutzkaiser " 
was erected on the 
Miihlberg, a hill near 
by which commanded 
it. Two heavy works 
were built on the south of the town, one on the water's edge, 
and one in the outer corner ; a number of bastions were 
constructed to strengthen the city wall, and the Sudenberg 
suburb was protected by a strong redoubt. On the west the 
two gates were strengthened by two horn-works and a crown- 
work. The north side, where the Neustadt lay, possessed a 
round bastion on a point surrounded by a dry arm of the 
Elbe. The gate here was fortified with two towers, and the 
suburb was itself intrenched. Work was vigorously pushed, 
and by the end of the year the citizens could truly claim that 
Magdeburg was a fortress. Falkenberg had shown energy 
and intelligence. But Magdeburg had a weak spot within 
walls. Christian William, the town council, the military 




222 PAPPENHEIM RESTLESS. 

under Falkenberg, the common folk, and a strong party of 
disaffected Catholics — each group of a different mind — 
furnished abundant means for disagreement and promise of 
treachery. 

Tilly paid small heed to Magdeburg. Between Gustavus 
and that scornful city, he scarcely knew which way to turn ; 
and yet its capture would have been almost the hardest blow 
he could deal the Swedes. Pappenheim understood this well. 
For months correspondence ran between the imperial army 
and the Magdeburg council, and efforts were made to bring 
the city back to the empire. But Falkenberg never permit- 
ted it to waver in its fealty to Gustavus, though the imperi- 
alists numbered some of the most influential citizens. He 
was not infrequently put to it to reconcile conflicting inter- 
ests ; but though he could not accomplish the moral task, 
he mastered the material one, and during the winter of 
1630-31, he labored to make the surrounding defenses 
stronger, and at designing new ones. On the right bank, 
whence Gustavus was expected, were erected the " Trutz- 
Pappenheim " furthest to the east, and the " Trutz-Tilly " 
nearer the town ; and upstream a large work, the " Magde- 
burg Succor." A line of heavy intrenchments arose along 
the right bank, and Falkenberg had twenty-five hundred 
men, plus citizen-militia, to man them. 

In November Tilly had proposed to besiege the city, but 
contented himself with leaving Pappenheim to blockade it 
while he turned towards Gustavus. He left his lieutenant 
with ten thousand men, but at times drew on this number 
for other service. Pappenheim was a hot-headed officer, ill 
adapted to so slow a process as this blockade ; to storm the 
city was more in his style ; and he fretted under the task. 
Count Wolf von Mansfeld had a small army near by, but lent 
no assistance, a fact which irritated Pappenheim still more. 



STORMING THE OUTWORKS. 223 

Finally, toward the beginning of April, Tilly was moved by 
Pappenheim's entreaties to permit him to take active meas- 
ures ; and the gallant lieutenant needed no second order. 
Falkenberg could not pretend to hold his long enceinte with 
his limited number of men. He might have been wise sooner 
to withdraw into the city. The defiant " Trutz-Pappenheim " 
was selected as a beginning, and after equally gallant assault 
and resistance, this redoubt, with the " Magdeburg Succor " 
and the " Trutz-Tilly," fell on April 9. On the morrow two 
more works on the right bank succumbed to Pappenheim's 
impetuous energy and heavy excess of forces ; while Mans- 
feld did a more moderate share in taking the three Buckau 
redoubts. The Magdeburgers lost all their outlying works 
and fully five hundred men. Some ten days later Tilly 
arrived. The joint forces before the town amounted to 
twenty-five thousand men, plus a detachment of nearly five 
thousand more at the Dessau bridge. This was fearful odds 
for Falkenberg's small garrison, now reduced to little more 
than two thousand soldiers. He had felt able to hold his 
works against Pappenheim, but now he had twelve times his 
force to face. 

Shortly after the fall of Frankfort, Tilly had received 
orders to march to the protection of the emperor's hered- 
itary lands, which would be threatened by the capture of 
that city. To do this was impossible. To divide forces 
would be to insure the failure of both detachments ; and the 
emperor had troops in Silesia, as it was. Tilly served both 
the League and the empire ; and a council of war decided to 
capture Magdeburg as a first step. 

The imperialists were now able to attack the works at the 
bridge-head and on the islands. The garrisons defended 
themselves nobly, even according to Pappenheim's high esti- 
mate, but eventually, about April 30, Falkenberg deemed it 



224 GUSTAVUS' DIFFICULTIES. 

best to draw them in, and the bridge and islands were lost. 
The citizens began to despair, and Gustavus seemed as far 
off as months ago. 

News came from time to time from the Swedish army, and 
its successes faintly cheered the weary waiters ; but the nego- 
tiations with Brandenburg and Saxony were to the last degree 
disheartening. Falkenberg and the council wrote repeatedly 
to the king, representing the growing scarcity of victual and 
powder, the intention of the enemy to control the Elbe by a 
bridge at Schbnebeck, eight miles up river, the almost muti- 
nous condition of the people, the unhelpfulness of the admin- 
istrator ; and prayed for speedy succor — " or we are lost." 
But Gustavus was powerless ; the two electors barred his 
way. 

There may have been men in the world's history who would 
have braved even these conditions, who would have frayed a 
path across Brandenburg and Saxony in the teeth of any 
opposition, and have marched to the relief of Magdeburg 
without regard to what lay behind them. But there have also 
been gigantic failures in the world's history from just such 
impetuousness. No one can accuse Gustavus of lack of per- 
sonal boldness. Of all great captains he is most like Alex- 
ander in his reckless disregard of danger, and even the Mace- 
donian could show no more wounds. His moral force — his 
capacity to face responsibility — was as marked. But what 
Gustavus did for the art of war sprang less from the exu- 
berance of his courage, less from that species of moral brav- 
ery which impels a man to take abnormal risks, than it did 
from his exceptional power of calculating correctly by the 
existing conditions what course would most certainly tend to 
the eventual success of the whole scheme. He had not the 
gambler's instinct so strongly as Napoleon. Had he let loose 
the reins of his gallantry, he would never have grown to be 



TILLY PUZZLED. 225 

the champion of Protestantism ; no one can tell what might 
have become of the cause of Reform in Germany. Such a 
Gustavus certainly could not have saved it. 

Falkenberg now leveled the suburbs to protect the town. 
On May 4 the inhabitants of the Sudenberg retired within 
the walls, and this suburb was burned ; and when Pappen- 
heim moved to the Neustadt, this too was fired. When all 
outlying garrisons were drawn in, there were not quite twenty- 
two hundred and fifty men, horse and foot. Pappenheim 
began regular approaches in the ruins of the Neustadt. 

Fearing that Gustavus would come to its relief before he 
had reduced it, Tilly opened negotiations with the town early 
in May. He wrote to the mayor and council, to the adminis- 
trator, to Falkenberg. But the advances were refused and 
messages again sent to Gustavus, praying hard for immediate 
succor. The council, however, offered to leave the whole 
matter to the joint decision of the electors of Brandenburg 
and Saxony, and the Hanse towns ; they held their messen- 
gers ready to depart upon this errand, so soon as Tilly should 
send a safe-conduct ; and of all this he received clear notice. 

Tilly was puzzled what to do. He heard of Gustavus' suc- 
cessive advances to Kopenick, Berlin, Spandau, Potsdam. He 
learned that negotiations were going on with John George, as 
well as George William, and he feared their early success. 
He was apprehensive lest the Saxon army should appear at 
Dessau. He must get possession of Magdeburg speedily, or 
else retire, baffled, as Wallenstein had done at Stralsund. He 
deemed himself in bad case, when he really had no cause to 
fear, for he had a larger force than Gustavus, unless Saxony 
should join the king. On the first appearance of Swedish 
cavalry near Zerbst, Tilly destroyed the Dessau bridge. 

While using his most persuasive measures against the town, 
the work in the trenches went on. The bombardment was 



226 PROPOSAL TO TREAT. 

opened on May 17, and was kept up three days. Under cover 
of it, the approaches in the Neustadt, in the Sudenberg and 
on the island progressed. Pappenheim, in the Neustadt, got 
to the very margin of the ditch, and fairly seamed the Neu- 
stadt with trenches. He sapped the counterscarp and pushed 
a covered gallery over the ditch, while the defenders were kept 
off the walls by a heavy fire. Breaches were operated ; the 
biggest of the towers fell ; indefatigable Pappenheim pushed 
five approaches to the fausse-hraye of the new bastion, tore 
out the palisades, and laid several hundred ladders. He 
worked on the other side of this bastion as well, making it a 
key -point for his proposed assault. The defenses of the town 
were also weakened on the west and on the river fronts. 

The defenders opposed this work with equal energy. Fires 
from the enemy's hot balls were kept down by systematic 
measures. The besieged countermined, and patched up the 
works as fast as these were disturbed ; but from want of 
powder they could not maintain a steady fire. 

On May 18 Tilly again dispatched a herald into the town. 
During the two weeks since the proposal to arbitrate, he had 
neither refused it nor sent a safe-conduct ; and now, on the 
score of time, he declined to allow the submission of the case. 
He practically demanded unconditioned surrender, or threat- 
ened to storm the town. The approach of the Swedes, of 
which Tilly now hourly expected to hear, spurred his deter- 
mination to adopt any course, right or wrong, to get posses- 
sion of the city. 

The council was convened, and the citizens were called 
together on May 19 to frame an answer. It was determined 
to treat with Tilly. Falkenberg protested, and asked for a 
meeting with the council, to be held at 4 A. M. on the 20th. 

On the afternoon of the 19th the fire of the imperialists 
ceased, and they could be seen, from the town, moving the 



TILLY'S TREACHERY. 221 

siege-guns to the rear. The townspeople began to hope that 
Gustavus was nearing, and Tilly was in fact on the point of 
giving up the siege, lest he should be interrupted by the 
" Snow King." He still hoped that at the last moment the 
town would accept his ultimatum, and he called a council of 
war to determine what to do. At this council it was sug- 
gested that an assault, delivered at an early morning hour, 
had succeeded elsewhere and might succeed here, and this 
suggestion Tilly eagerly grasped at. He determined to storm 
the breaches at daylight next day. 

Through the disaffected Catholics Tilly knew all that was 
going on in the town. They kept him posted as to the 
strength of the guard at various points, the hours of relief, 
the means of defense, the want of powder ; and there is not 
wanting evidence that messages were thrown from the walls 
on the morning of the 20th, before sunrise, to the effect that 
now was the very time. 

Whatever the other facts, it is beyond dispute that while 
the council was sitting in debate on Tilly's ultimatum, while 
the imperial herald was still within the walls of Magdeburg 
awaiting the council's answer, the army of Tilly was ordered 
forward to the walls. It is beyond dispute that the general- 
issimo had given every indication to the town that he was 
still negotiating and would await a final answer, and yet he 
sent Pappenheim to storm the works. This treachery is on 
a par with that of Caesar against the Usipetes and Tench- 
theri. 

At daylight some of the guard had left the walls, prompted 
thereto by the knowledge that the ultimatum was being dis- 
cussed, and the belief that there was nothing for the moment 
to fear. The officers of rank were all at the council. Mat- 
ters were more lax than usual. At 7 a. m., after quiet prepa- 
ration, Pappenheim assaulted at two points : the round bas- 



228 FORTY THOUSAND DEAD. 

tion near the Elbe, where a party of Croats was sent forward, 
and the bastion which he had so vigorously approached, where 
he in person led the party. The Croats easily forced their 
way in. Pappenheim found only a few sentries on hand and 
the watch surrounding the chaplain at morning prayers ; and 
he pushed his party over the walls with scarce a semblance of 
opposition. He was having things all his own way, when 
Falkenberg appeared, hastily summoned from the council 
chamber, and met him with what men he could instantly 
collect. For a brief moment Falkenberg was able to check 
both the Croats and Pappenheim ; but he soon fell. Pap- 
penheim was receiving constant accessions to his force, and 
in less than an hour there remained nothing to resist him. 
Mansf eld was slow in storming ; but when Pappenheim had 
effected his entrance, he too forced his way into the town. 

The city was given over to plunder. The horrors of the 
scene have been all too often dwelt on. There perished forty 
thousand souls. Treachery was followed by its fellow, mas- 
sacre. 

It will always remain doubtful how Magdeburg was burned. 
It is charged to Tilly unjustly ; Pappenheim, Falkenberg, the 
citizens, the imperial troops, have each in turn been accused 
of deliberately destroying the beautiful city. The event left 
Magdeburg a pile of ashes surrounding the cathedral, which 
alone escaped. 



w 



Swiss Sword. (15th Century.) 



XVIII. 

GUSTAYUS ADVANCES TO THE ELBE. JUNE AND JULY, 

1631. 

The capture of Magdeburg' meant retreat for Gustavus, lest Brandenburg 
and Saxony should side with the emperor and endanger bis bastion. He fell 
back to tbe Havel, and here awaited Tilly. But the Walloon had won fame 
enough; he essayed no forward movement; reinforcements were coming up 
from Italy, which he desired to draw in before attacking Gustavus ; and he was 
shortly ordered to move on Hesse-Cassel and Saxony, to compel their submis- 
sion to the imperial dictates. Pappenheim remained in the Magdeburg country. 
Hesse-Cassel prepared for resistance ; the landgrave and the duke of Saxe- 
Weimar were stanch allies of Gustavus. Seeing that Tilly did not advance 
on him, Gustavus strengthened the Havel line, and compelled George William 
to yield up Spandau for the war. Shortly Greifswalde, the last town within 
the bastion, fell ; Mecklenburg was overrun, and the dukes reinstated. Gus- 
tavus, now secure at all points, extended his right flank to the Elbe, to 
draw Tilly from Hesse-Cassel ; crossed the river, and intrenched a camp at 
Werben. Tilly did in fact come up, joined Pappenheim and moved towards 
the king. The latter fell on his advanced cavalry-parties and cut them up. 
Incensed, Tilly marched on Werben and attacked the camp ; but, severely 
punished, he retired. 

At the downfall of the proud Lutheran city, the Catholics 
rejoiced with cruel taunts ; many Protestants were disheart- 
ened, many cowed by her awful fate. Who knew where next 
the imperial lightning might strike ? No one was seer enough 
to foretell a deliverer in the Swedish monarch. The only 
man in Germany who gauged his value was Wallenstein. 

The capture of Magdeburg meant retreat for Gustavus. 
Had he reached the place in time to drive off Tilly, Bran- 
denburg and Saxony might have joined his cause ; now they 



230 OPEN TO ATTACK. 

were more likely to be enemies who might cut him off from 
the sea. He must force Brandenburg to his will without 
delay ; Saxony must wait. As some were inclined to blame 
the king for forsaking Magdeburg, he issued a manifesto, 
couched in no equivocal terms, putting the blame on John 
George, where it properly belonged, for his obstructive meas- 
ures ; and, quite out of patience with the time-serving of the 
Protestants, prepared to retire. 

He was fortunate in one thing. Had Tilly followed him 
up, sustained by Saxony, the Swedes might have been crowded 
back to the coast. But Tilly sat down to enjoy his success, 
and never dreamed of an advance. He deemed Gustavus' 
entire venture at an end, as a less well-poised leader's might 
have been, as Christian's had been. Pappenheim chafed 
under this restraint ; but he was young and ardent, and he 
was not the commander-in-chief. 

Having for the moment no inducement to advance to the 
Elbe, and uncertain as to Tilly's manoeuvres, Gustavus again 
assumed the line of the Oder as a point d'appui. He dis- 
patched orders to Horn to rebuild the Oder bridge at 
Schaumberg, so that the Swedish army might retire on it if 
driven back ; and Frankfort was to be fortified to the highest 
degree by chief engineer Porticus. These precautions were 
wise, but, as matters eventuated, they were not needed. 

There was no doubt in Gustavus' mind that the enemy 
would now seize the opportunity which victory had given 
him, and be prepared to meet him. The Swedish line was 
open to attack from Silesia, and this was to be guarded 
against on the line of the Oder-Warta. It was open to 
attack from Dessau, and this could be met by holding the 
line of the Spree-Havel. An imperial attack from Mecklen- 
burg was improbable on account of the promised restoration 
of its dukes ; and if Greifswalde were once secured, Pome- 



THE NEW LINE. 231 

rania was tolerably safe. This left a long but good defensive 
line, and from it Gustavus could debouch towards the Elbe, 
if the enemy did not break down his defense. By pivoting 
on Frankfort he could swing forward his right, and by secur- 
ing a strong place on the Elbe, his new base would be more 
firmly held than ever. Its front would cover much territory, 
but it would be protected by such places as Stettin and 
Frankfort on the left, and Hamburg and Liibeck on the 
right ; while in the centre Gustavus would fortify a strong- 
line on the Havel. Hamilton was shortly expected in the 
Weser with a goodly force, and this would add Bremen to 
the cause and extend the line to the North Sea. 

The command of the important centre was given to Baner 
early in July. He had three brigades: Teuffel's at Bran- 
denburg and Rathenow ; Hepburn's at Potsdam ; a third 
was divided between Bernau and the Biitzow country, which 
latter place was a defile in the network of lakes in this part 
of Mecklenburg. Headquarters were at Fehrbellin. 

The left was intrusted to Horn. He had a bare fifteen 
hundred men, and news came that the imperialists in Silesia, 
encouraged by the Magdeburg success, would soon move 
down the Oder. The outpost at Crossen occasionally had 
touch with the enemy, and in May, as suggested by Pappen- 
heim, a number of regiments assembled in the Glogau coun- 
try, and threatened Crossen and Ziillichau. To meet this 
threat, Gustavus ordered Horn to strengthen Crossen, to 
recruit up his garrisons in the Neumark, and particularly 
to hold the bridges at Frankfort, Ciistrin and Schaumberg. 
He was to turn Arenswalde, Barwalde and Konigsberg into 
strong places to retire on. If Crossen was attacked, Gusta- 
vus assured Horn that he would hurry to his relief with 
troops from the Havel and Spree. 

Happily for the cause, the imperialists lacked earnestness. 



232 TILLY'S WEAK CONDUCT. 

They had stomach for their plundering ; they had none for 
serious war. Horn had time to carry out his orders ; the 
imperialists played with the business. They took Kotbus ; 
Horn captured Griineberg ; and soon after Gustavus advanced 
him to Crossen, where he erected a strongly intrenched camp. 

On the whole, the horror of Magdeburg enraged rather 
than discouraged the Protestants ; and despite the threats of 
the emperor they continued to equip troops, though without 
joint action. Hesse-Cassel and Saxe- Weimar were among 
the most active ; while the elector of Saxony used his large 
army to preserve his neutrality. 

It was at Stettin that Gustavus received an embassy from 
Russia, tendering good-will and an auxiliary corps. The 
king declined the troops, but received the minister with 
pleasure, and sent back friendly thanks to the czar. 

Tilly's conduct after his victory at Magdeburg was not 
that of a great soldier. He lamely explained, in a letter of 
May 26 to the elector of Bavaria, that until he knew which 
way Gustavus had retired, he was unable to pursue him, and 
must remain in situ ; that it would take some time to raze 
the walls, fill up the ditch, and see to victualing Magdeburg ; 
that the enemy had seized all the defiles in Brandenburg ; 
that this electorate was so destitute of provision that no army 
could move through it ; and, as victual was growing scarce, 
he suggested a march against Hesse-Cassel and Thuringia, 
where was abundance. This he wrote, while Gustavus stood 
on the Havel, anxious as to the enemy's advance from a 
military standpoint ; actually dreading its political effect on 
George William; fearing that he might lose his initiative, 
mistrusting some combination that might drive him back to 
the sea. How Tilly could imagine that he might absent him- 
self from the theatre of active operations without opening the 
way to farther Swedish advance, it is hard to see. Curiously, 



TILLY FINALLY MOVES. 233 

Pappenheim, who usually had the happy trick of seeking the 
enemy, rather favored the plan of Tilly ; but he was not the 
man to dally in its execution, if adopted. 

In view of the generalissimo's representations and the con- 
tinued arming of the Protestants, the emperor did order 
Tilly to take measures to compel the minor powers to cease 
warlike preparations, as being inconsistent with their fealty ; 
but the old general was hard to get started. He remained 
in Magdeburg till the beginning of June ; and wrote to Max- 
imilian that with the Swedes and Saxons joining hands, 
which he expected daily, and with Hesse-Cassel arming in 
his rear, he feared to be surrounded and his army compro- 
mised. 

Tilly was a queer compound of courage and the want of it. 
No man possessed more personal gallantry, as he had demon- 
strated on a hundred fields ; but he lacked that larger intel- 
lectual and moral force which enables one to gauge danger 
and to accept responsibility. He was a noble battle-field 
fighter ; but he suffered from strategic myopia. Finally the 
old man took courage, left five thousand foot and seven hun- 
dred horse in Magdeburg, under Mansfeld, and Pappenheim 
near by with a small army, and at the head of seventeen 
thousand five hundred foot, seven thousand horse and twenty- 
eight guns, broke up towards Hesse-Cassel. On the way the 
imperial troops devastated the country with fire and sword, 
and committed untold atrocities. To swell their numbers 
the League furnished nine thousand foot and two thousand 
horse ; the Netherlands, four Spanish regiments ; in Silesia 
were ten thousand men ; from Italy twenty-five thousand 
were started north under Aldringer and Fiirstenberg. The 
latter came up very slowly ; some of the columns took a 
year to reach the Elbe from Mantua, being delayed in Swabia 
and Franconia by their orders to compel the Leipsic Conven- 



234 BRAVE WILLIAM OF HESSE. 

tion states to submit to the emperor and disarm. Matters 
looked serious for Hesse-Cassel ; but for all the dangers men- 
acing him, the gallant landgrave ceased not from his work. 

William of Hesse-Cassel was young, but a man of action. 
So early as August, 1630, he had offered his assistance to 
Gustavus, averring that he could not bring much, but that 
his two fortresses, Cassel and Ziegenhain, should be shut to 
the imperialists and open to him. Gustavus concluded a 
treaty with him ; and urged him to combine with the states 
of Weimar, Culmbach and Wiirtemberg, and the free towns 
of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Merseburg and Strasburg, which 
between them could readily arm ten thousand men. The 
landgrave did his best, but the interference of the imperial- 
ists prevented him, and Duke Bernard of Weimar, who 
worked with him, from accomplishing much. At the Leipsic 
Convention, these two were almost the only ones who spoke 
for the Swedes. Under the Leipsic agreement, they armed, 
as it was understood, for defense, but really proposing to aid 
Gustavus and to seek his aid. As Tilly approached, the 
landgrave mobilized his men, beset the defiles and roads, 
strengthened his fortresses, and peremptorily refused Tilly's 
demands for contribution. Fortunately for the cause, the 
elector of Saxony, though still claiming neutrality, was 
angered by the menaces of Tilly, and determined to resist to 
the uttermost any inroads on his territory by either party. 

Gustavus kept strictly to his agreement with Brandenburg, 
and after some tedious negotiations succeeding the fall of 
Magdeburg, on June 9 surrendered Spandau, which had 
been turned over to him only until the fate of that city should 
be decided. 

If we look at the mere military question, Gustavus was 
not justified in his anxiety ; but a study of the entire situa- 
tion, political and military, shows us that the antagonism of 



GEORGE WILLIAM SUCCUMBS. 235 

Saxony and the unreliability of Brandenburg placed the king 
in a questionable case. To surrender Spandau meant to give 
up the line of the Havel, as well as touch with the Elbe ; 
and if the elector should demand back Ciistrin, Stettin itself 
would not be safe. Gustavus felt that he was justified in 
any course to prevent such a catastrophe. He told George 
William that if he so chose he would leave him to fig'ht the 
imperial army single-handed. This was in reality the last 
thing the time-serving elector dared face. He would have 
been happy to leave Spandau and Ciistrin in Swedish hands 
as the price of support, but, as was his habit, he delayed and 
talked, while Gustavus, along the Havel, awaited Tilly's 
advance. Had it not been for abandoning Hesse-Cassel and 
Weimar, he would have gladly returned to the Oder. 

Gustavus had complied with his obligation ; but, sick of 
the fast and loose conduct of George William, he made up 
his mind to cut the knot of the difficulty; and some days 
after the surrender of Spandau, he marched on Berlin, and 
at the mouth of his cannon, supported by his army in line of 
battle, forced the elector to a fresh treaty, by which the 
Swedes should retain Spandau for good ; have constant pas- 
sage through Ciistrin, or indeed occupy it with their troops ; 
and the elector should pay the Swedes thirty thousand thalers 
a month. The trifling of George William was thus brought 
to an end ; he concluded to come to an amicable understand- 
ing, and the treaty was subscribed amid festivities. 

The king concentrated near Brandenburg some twelve 
thousand men, and while awaiting events, secured his position 
by taking and strengthening neighboring towns on the Elbe 
and Havel. Greifswalde in his rear was the last outstanding 
fortress in Pomerania. Early in June a stray party of impe- 
rialists, perhaps on a reconnoissance, appeared before Malchin, 
and led Gustavus to believe that an attack on Stralsund or 



236 TOTT'S SUCCESSES. 

the relief of Greif swalde was in contemplation. He ordered 
General Ake Tott, one of his best officers, to collect all 
available troops in Loitz on June 20, where he intended to 
meet him ; but unable to leave Brandenburg, he intrusted 
the entire conduct of the affair to Tott, who, with twenty-two 
hundred men, marched on Greifswalde, and on the night of 
June 22-23 opened his trenches. On the 23d a sortie was 
repelled and a bombardment begun. This was followed by 
the appearance of a herald, and on June 25 the imperialists 
marched out. The commandant, Perusi, had been killed, or 
the matter would have been less easy. For this brilliant suc- 
cess Tott was made field-marshal, and ordered to advance 
against Rostock and Wismar, to open the road to Liibeck. 
To have an eye to the situation, Gustavus shortly after went 
on to Greifswalde ; but finding that Tott was abreast of the 
business, he returned to Spandau July 2. 

With a suitable van of cavalry, the new field-marshal 
moved into Mecklenburg, spread all over the country, took 
Biitzow and Schwan, drove the imperialists before him, and 
blockaded Rostock. A detachment marched south from 
Malchin, and seized Mirow and Plau. The dukes were in 
Liibeck, waiting with a small army, and in connection with 
them, though Giistrow and Schwerin held out till midsummer, 
Tott reduced all Mecklenburg except Rostock, Wismar and 
Domitz. Many men from the garrisons thus taken preferred 
to enlist in the Swedish service to being paroled or held as 
prisoners. On July 5 the dukes were formally reinstated in 
their rights ; but they showed small gratitude;' they acted in 
a selfish and shortsighted manner, and every pound of bread 
for the troops which had reinstated them had to be wrung 
from their unwilling grasp. 

Baner, whom Gustavus had left on the Havel, with instruc- 
tions to occupy all the strong places on that river, to strengthen 



ACCESSIONS OF RECRUITS. 237 

the works of Spandau and Brandenburg, and to build a 
redoubt at Potsdam, took Havelberg by storm on June 22, 
and strongly garrisoned it. Gustavus could now see his way 
clear to a campaign on the Elbe ; with Pomerania, Mecklen- 
burg and Brandenburg under his control, he practically com- 
manded all the country to the north of that river ; and Tilly 
was otherwise occupied. The scene had changed. 

After what seemed to many his decisive victory at Magde- 
burg, Tilly, under his instructions to enforce the Edict of 
Restitution, to compel the disarmament of the German 
princes, or to incorporate their troops in his own army, moved 
via Aschersleben June 9, Oldisleben and Miihlhausen June 
16-26, and captured Gotha, Eisenach and Weimar, while 
Erfurt bought itself off by a payment of money. He sent 
out detachments right and left, demanding that the imperial- 
ists be admitted into the fortresses ; that the landgrave 
should disband his army, furnish the empire five regiments, 
give over Cassel and Ziegenhain to imperial garrisons, and 
pay the contributions which he should assess. Assembling 
his forces at Cassel, William firmly refused. Tilly wavered. 
The landgrave had six thousand or more men, recruits to be 
sure, but still soldiers, in his fortresses, and the victor of 
Magdeburg was loth to attack them. Age was encroaching 
on his energy ; but his presence none the less put Hesse-Cas- 
sel in a perilous case. 

About this time some eight thousand men from Sweden 
were arriving in Stettin. Of these, four thousand were 
brought to the main force on the Havel, and four thousand 
were sent to Tott, who was to join the king with old troops 
to an equal number. At the same time seven thousand Eng- 
lish troops, under Marquis Hamilton, landed in the mouth of 
the Peene, instead of in the Weser, as expected. These regi- 
ments were sent to Horn on the Oder, and he was ordered to 



238 A FOOTING ON THE ELBE. 

leave a total of four thousand new men on that line, and pre- 
pare to join the king with the balance. Gustavus aimed at 
having service-hardened men at the front. Hamilton's troops 
are said not to have been of the best quality ; before the end 
of the campaign they ran down to fifteen hundred men by 
disease and desertion, and were in a sad state of discipline. 

Heartily tired of the timidity and unhelpfulness of the 
Protestant princes, the king now saw himself by his own 
efforts in possession of the bastion on the south of the Baltic 
which he had originally aimed to possess for the safety of 
Sweden ; and the idea began to impress itself upon him that 
if his brothers in the faith cared so little for his help, he 
might hold this bastion, whose walls would be the lines of 
the Oder-Warta, Spree-Havel and Elbe, and stand in a 
purely defensive attitude against the emperor. Both the lack 
of funds and the questionable tendencies of Denmark made 
this course seem not unadvisable ; but to complete the work, 
Gustavus must plant his foot firmly on the Elbe, and to this 
he now addressed himself. The question of the defensive 
might wait. 

Arrived in Spandau, he determined to push at once for the 
Elbe, not only to complete his bastion, but to draw Tilly away 
from Hesse-Cassel. Heading seven thousand foot and three 
thousand horse, he moved from Brandenburg out towards 
Burg. He imagined that he might tempt Pappenheim from 
Magdeburg across the river, and engage him ; but failing 
this, he headed downstream, to Jericho w, which he reached 
July 8. Pappenheim had an outpost at Tangermunde, oppo- 
site, and was at the moment there. On July 9 the king again 
moved upstream, to lead him to believe that he was aiming 
for Magdeburg, and Pappenheim marched up to anticipate 
him. Like Caesar on the Elaver, Gustavus immediately 
marched back to Jerichow, put a few hundred men across 



A NOTEWORTHY CROSSING. 



239 



on boats, captured Tangernmnde and its castle July 10, as 
well as Stendal and Arneburg, collected all the boats up and 
down river and built a bridge, on which he crossed his army, 
and took up a strongly fortified camp near the town of 
Werben, opposite the 
confluence of the Havel 
and the Elbe. Utiliz- 
ing the embankments as 
works, he built a fort on 
the right bank to protect 
his bridge, which he moved 
up from Tangermiinde, 
and threw up another fort 
at the mouth of the Havel. 
Havelberg had already 
been taken, and Gusta- 

vus' position on the Elbe was made reasonably secure, 
penheim retired to Halberstadt. 

The garrisons of these places were captured, and the men 
sent in a body to headquarters. As the king came out to 
inspect them, they fell on their knees to beg for mercy. 
" Get up," said the king, " I am no god for you to fall down 
before." Then he added, " You have all acted like brigands 
and deserve the gallows ; but I will make you a present of 
your lives." 

Though he would have liked to march on Magdeburg, Gus- 




The Wfirben Camp. 



Pap- 



tavus contented himself with what he had got. 



His feeling 



for the offensive was damped by the conduct of the men he 
had expected to find frank and faithful allies. He held 
Brandenburg in the leash, but Saxony was not to be moved, 
and he was at a loss to explain Tilly's queer lack of enter- 
prise. Gustavus could get no money ; victualing was so diffi- 
cult that on one or two occasions the population had cause to 



240 TILLY ADVANCES. 

complain of excesses by the troops ; there was a vast deal of 
sickness. The weeks in Werben during July and August, 
1631, were perhaps the monarch's most disheartening period. 

One of his objects — to draw the enemy away from his 
allies — had been accomplished by the march to Werben. 
Pappenheim, single-handed, felt unequal to the task of facing 
Gustavus, and called Tilly to his aid. His chief threw up 
his half-hearted attack on Hesse-Cassel, left a portion of his 
troops on its borders, and hurried back to the Elbe. Despite 
his victory he had lost two months and accomplished nothing, 
while Gustavus had greatly bettered his position. Joining 
Pappenheim, Tilly, with twenty-seven thousand men, took 
position at Wolmirstadt below Magdeburg, and on July 27 
threw out three regiments of cavalry towards Werben to 
reconnoitre. Gustavus was ready to meet him in earnest. 
To help protect the Havel line, he ordered Horn to leave 
suitable garrisons in Frankfort, Landsberg and Crossen, and 
some cavalry to scout the Oder-Warta, and to march with all 
his available force to Fiirstenwalde, detaching meanwhile a 
thousand musketeers to Brandenburg. Tott was to send an 
equal number. 

The king had not exceeding sixteen thousand men, but 
he took advantage of the isolation of Tilly's cavalry party. 
From Arneburg, twelve miles up the river, where he had 
concentrated his own cavalry, he marched, August 1, to Bellin- 
gen, and sent out patrols, and later an intelligent staff-officer 
to reconnoitre. The latter brought in some prisoners and 
information as to the enemy's whereabouts, acting on which 
the king advanced at nightfall halfway to Burgstall. Here 
he divided his force, which was about four thousand strong, 
into three columns. The first, under the rhinegrave, was to 
attack Burgstall; the second, under Baudissin, was to fall 
on Angern ; the king with the third would advance between 



A CAVALRY COMBAT. 



241 



the two others on Kheindorf. The columns were set in 
motion. 

The rhinegrave captured Burgstall, cut down or dispersed 
the imperial regiment there stationed, and took its baggage. 
At Angern the attack was equally successful, the enemy 
losing three hundred killed and many prisoners. When the 
king reached Rheindorf, he found 
Tilly's men, who had caught the 
alarm, drawn up in line. Though 
he had with him but three hun- 
dred horse, he fell with fury upon 
the imperial regiment, which of- 
fered no worthy resistance, and cut 
it to pieces; part escaped in the 
darkness, but all the baggage was 
taken. In the fray Gustavus, with 
his usual recklessness, rode into the 
midst of the enemy, was surrounded, 
and but for the fidelity and cour- 
age of Captain Harold Stake, would 
have lost his life. After this bril- 
liant foray the party retired to 
Bellingen, and to Werben the next 
day, stationing the cavalry at Sten- 
dal. This capital stroke decidedly 
raised the morale of the men, while the imperialists felt the 
blow to a greater degree than the loss warranted. 

To make up for this defeat, which he appeared to resent 
keenly, Tilly, leaving Wolmirstadt with fifteen thousand foot 
and seven thousand horse, moved on August 6 to the camp 
at Werben, drew up in battle order, and cannonaded the 
works with sixteen heavy guns, sharply but ineffectively. 
He was doubtful about assault, as no practicable breach had 




Burgstall Operation. 



242 TILLY DEFEATED. 

been made, until he was given to understand by what he sup- 
posed were disaffected soldiers in Gustavus' service, that at 
a given time next day the Swedish guns would be spiked at 
a particular part of the line. Eelying upon this informa- 
tion, which he had no means of verifying, he sent his men to 
the assault August 7. But the Swedish guns — as always — 
were in good hands ; Tilly's onslaught, though delivered with 
the old soldier's wonted elan and in massed columns, was met 
by so murderous a fire that its onset was checked ; while the 
cavalry under Baudissin at the opportune moment debouched 
from a side gate, and galloping in on the Walloon's flank, 
completed his discomfiture with extremely heavy losses. 

In this cavalry charge young Duke Bernard of Saxe- 
Weimar distinguished himself and attracted the monarch's 
eye. While Gustavus' reckless exposure of his person in 
battle was often without justification, his example none the 
less produced a wonderful effect on 'the officers of the army. 
Where the king exhibited such a spirit, how should any 
man lack bravery ? The result of Gustavus' gallantry was 
markedly for good, — indefensible as it was, and sad as its' 
results proved in the succeeding year. 

Seeing no gain from remaining in Gustavus' front, Tilly 
retired to Tangermiinde August 9. He had incurred a loss 
of six thousand killed and wounded within a few days, plus 
a great number of desertions. Thence, hearing that on 
August 7 Horn had arrived at Rathenow with nine thousand 
men, he hastily retired to Wolmirstadt, lest he should be taken 
in flank. The imperial general thus left under a cloud the 
vicinity where so long he had triumphed. The two captains 
had measured swords, and unconquered Tilly had given up 
the field without a victory. 

As Tilly might be about to cross the Elbe, to pierce the 
Havel line, Gustavus prepared a bridge over the Dosse, so as 



THE BASTION SECURED. 



243 



readily to retire to its defense, and ordered Baner to dam 
and flood the river. But Tilly did not venture any forward 
movement. 

The king had consumed a year in securing his bastion on 
the southern shore of the Baltic. At times his conduct had 
seemed to savor of over-caution ; but when we consider that 
he landed in Germany with but thirteen thousand men ; that 
he had received no assistance from the folk he had come to 
aid ; that he was opposed by superior numbers, the sum total 
of the year shows up splendidly, and his caution had been 
worth any amount of recklessness. His base was now 
assured, and the time for action had come. We shall see 
how nobly he improved it. 




Horse and Equipments used by Gustavus at Liitzen. (Stock- 
holm Museum.) 



XIX. 

TILLY INVADES HESSE-CASSEL AND SAXONY. AUGUST, 

1631. 

The south German Protestants had all submitted to the imperial decrees ; 
it remained to force the north German principalities into line. Gustavus left 
the Werben camp well garrisoned, and assumed position on the Havel. Tilly 
marched on Hesse-Cassel, where the landgrave and Bernard held head to 
him, and then against Saxony, with orders to disarm it. Marking his progress 
with fire and sword, he reached Leipsic and gave his ultimatum. The elector 
was in sad case, hut he had brought his troubles on his own head. After a few 
days' resistance, Tilly captured Leipsic, and sat down to await reinforcements. 
Meanwhile Gustavus advanced to the Elbe, anticipating what must follow. 
Driven to desperation, John George made a treaty, offensive and defensive, with 
the king, and Gustavus crossed the Elbe and marched to join the Saxon army, 
which was put at his entire disposal. A council of war determined on attack, 
and the two armies advanced towards Leipsic. Gustavus, with his line of 
small brigades and shallow formation, armed with handy muskets, and aided 
by quick-firing cannon, was to measure himself against the heavy battles of 
renowned Tilly. It was activity against bulk. Tilly lay with his back to 
Leipsic, facing north ; Gustavus was advancing southerly. 

For many months the imperial troops under Fiirstenberg, 
Aldringer and Fugger had been marching up from Italy, had 
moved into Swabia and Franconia, and by untold outrage 
compelled the Protestant princes who were acting under the 
Leipsic Convention, to submit to the emperor, to enlist under 
the imperial banners the troops raised for their own defense, 
and to pay heavy penalties. These officers had orders to 
reinforce Tilly, and their head of column had already crossed 
the Main. Tilly remained at Wolmirstadt, which was a 
central point between Brandenburg, Saxony and Hesse- 




a 
'3 



246 TREATY WITH HESSE. 

Cassel, and enabled him to watch them all. His troops were 
badly off as to health and victual, and quite wanting in camp 
discipline, though in battle, be it said to their credit, Tilly's 
men always behaved well, as their chief commanded nobly. 

While the king was awaiting events, Landgrave William 
of Hesse-Cassel came to Werben, definitely to cast in his for- 
tunes with the Swedes ; and a treaty offensive and defensive 
was made, in which Weimar was included. Ten thousand 
men could be raised by these states ; and it was agreed that 
the Swedes should protect the new allies, who would open 
their fortresses to Gustavus and close them to the emperor. 
The landgrave did not feel that Gustavus had failed in his 
obligations to Magdeburg, and shortly went back to watch 
his territory. 

For his gallantry displayed in Tilly's attack on Werben, 
Duke Bernard of Saxe- Weimar had been made colonel of 
Gustavus' body-guard cavalry regiment. With the landgrave 
the king sent back two of his best battalions as a nucleus for 
drill and discipline, and it was arranged that Bernard should 
take command of the Hessian contingent, as the landgrave had 
much confidence in his military skill. Then, in mid-August, 
leaving in the Werben camp, under Baudissin and Teuffel, a 
force sufficient to defend it, with eighteen thousand troops the 
king moved b} r his left, back of the Havel, and took post at 
Havelberg, Brandenburg and Rathenow, in a position to con- 
centrate and move on any point. He considered the Havel, 
under the circumstances, a better rendezvous than Werben. 
Each detachment had orders to act on the defensive if 
attacked, utilizing the near-by strong places, until the king 
came up to its assistance. Gustavus had materially gained 
since the disaster at Magdeburg, but he was still compelled 
to wait on Saxony, whose action he believed the enemy under 
the positive orders of the emperor would shortly force ; or 



BOLD BERNARD. 247 

should Tilly advance, by confining him to the devastated strip 
between the Havel and the Elbe, the king hoped to drive him 
back on Saxony, and thus oblige the elector the quicker to 
decide whose cause he would embrace. Meanwhile, as Tilly 
moved on his new errand, Gustavus advanced nearer the 
Saxon border, to be ready to help John George whenever 
the elector should be ready to help himself. The imperialists 
played into his hands. 

Tilly had definite orders to bring the north German 
princes back to their fealty, as those of south Germany had 
been, — by the sword. From Tangermiinde he had notified 
the Hessians that they must choose between landgrave and 
emperor, and the loyal Hessians gave a noble reply. With 
but five thousand men under his command, Bernard threw 
down the gauntlet. He captured Fritzlar at the end of 
August, while the duke of Hersfeld laid Fulda under contri- 
bution. This was bold conduct in face of the approach of 
the Italian troops, eager to do by Hesse-Cassel as they had 
done by the south German states. But the danger to Hesse 
and Weimar settled itself. Tilly reached Eisleben August 
28 ; and from here, under his new instructions, he ordered 
Aldringer with his seven thousand men, and Fiirstenberg 
with his twenty thousand, to join him for an attack on Sax- 
ony. Tiefenbach from Silesia was to demonstrate on the 
Saxon rear, while Fugger was sent against Hesse-Cassel. 

The reason of this change of plan was that the emperor felt 
that it was time to compel Saxony to disarm and submit to 
his authority. He had already made some demands in May 
and July, after a long correspondence dating back to 1630, 
and he now proposed to show that his demands must be met. 
It was for this purpose that Ferdinand ordered Tilly to move 
on John George and enforce the Edict of Restitution. 

Between them the imperial generals had thirty-four thou- 



248 JOHN GEORGE HARASSED. 

sand men, and Aldringer had got as far as Jena. Tilly's 
troops moved towards Leipsic with the usual barbarous dev- 
astation, — two hundred burning villages lay in his wake, — 
and reached Halle September 4, and Merseburg next day. 
They finally went into camp between the two places, and 
roving about, plundered the entire neighborhood of Merse- 
burg, Nauniburg and Zeitz. Here Tilly declared himself. 
He demanded that John George should quarter and feed the 
imperial army, disband his new levies, serve under his (Tilly's) 
orders with a suitable contingent, formally recognize the 
emperor, and disavow any and all connection with the Swed- 
ish business. 

John George was in pitiable case ; but sympathy for him 
would be wasted. Saxony was torn by three parties, the 
Swedish, the imperial and the neutral. Between his ties to 
the emperor, his Lutheranism, and his desire to erect in Ger- 
many a Third Party which should grow to be strong enough 
to control both the emperor and the emperor's enemies, he 
knew not which way to turn. And yet fire and sword were 
at his gates. He was at this moment under the control of 
Count Arnim, who was a Brandenburger and a Lutheran, had 
been Wallenstein's lieutenant at Stralsund, had served with 
Koniezpolski against Gustavus in Poland, and had now 
become Saxon generalissimo. The Third Party notion was 
as much Arnim' s pet idea as the Corpus Evangelicorum, or 
union of the Protestant powers, was Gustavus'. 

In all his negotiations with John George, the king had 
shown himself frank and aboveboard in his desire to sub- 
serve the cause of religion in Germany. He was even now 
ready to leave the cause with John George and retire to 
Sweden, providing his rights and those of his fatherland were 
fitly recognized. He had done everything to persuade the 
elector to joint efforts, but John George could not bring him- 



COURAGEOUS LEIPSIC. 



249 



self to an alliance with Sweden until the last ray of hope was 
gone of reconciling the two religions under the empire. 

Nearing Leipsic, Tilly, on September 8, demanded a sup- 
ply of victual from 
this city; but the 
citizens were bold 
in their reply. Un- 
less their master, 
the elector, con- 
sented, they would 
have no dealings 
with Tilly. The 
imperial general 
appeared before 
the gates, devas- 
tated the entire 
region, and again 
demanded quar- 
ters and rations. 
Again refused, he 
moved on the 
town, camped near 
Mockern, and 

threatened Leipsic 
with utter destruc- 
tion unless it sur- 
rendered. More 




Leipsic and Breitenf eld. 



bold than discreet, the citizens replied as before. Tilly 
opened trenches, planted a heavy battery of siege-guns and 
mortars at Pfaffendorf, and intrenched the heights at 
Entritsch to bar the road from Diiben, by which the Swedes 
might come. The citizens burned the suburbs, manned the 
walls, and replied with some effect to Tilly's fire, which began 



250 TILLY CAPTURES LEIPSIC. 

September 14. After nearly a day's bombardment Tilly 
again demanded surrender, and threatened the city with the 
fate of Magdeburg in case the gates were not forthwith 
opened. 

The three messengers sent by the elector had been cap- 
tured ; Leipsic did not know how near relief was ; and fur- 
ther resistance being mere madness, Tilly's ultimatum was 
accepted September 16. Four hundred thousand florins were 
paid, the small garrison marched out with the honors of war, 
and Tilly occupied the town. Scarcely within walls, Tilly 
received news of the approach of the allies. He at once 
marched to the north of the city, and drew up in battle order 
on the hills opposite Podelwitz and Gbbschelwitz, and with 
Leipsic in his rear. He would have been glad to wait for 
Aldringer and Fugger, but reinforcements were to be denied 
him. 

The plundering and devastation of the imperial army had 
embittered the elector, whose obstinate clinging to his impos- 
sible neutrality was now reaping its reward, and finally pre- 
vailed on him to declare against the empire. Not counting 
garrisons, he had some eighteen thousand men assembled in 
Torgau to prevent Tilly's reaching Dresden. 

Gustavus had advanced to Wittenberg on September 2, 
with five thousand cavalry. Baner and Teuffel followed, 
while to Tott was committed the duty of holding the bastion, 
should matters turn out badly. Horn was to form a new 
army, on the nucleus of the Havel troops, from a promised 
Brandenburg contingent, some Swedish cavalry to arrive, the 
Scotch battalions, and the men of Hamilton and Leslie ; and 
to be ready, if ordered, to move on Silesia. 

The Swedish army, on September 3, had reached Coswig 
and Wittenberg. John George having succumbed, Branden- 
burg and Saxony, from whatever motives, were arrayed on the 



GUSTAVUS CROSSES THE ELBE. 251 

Swedish side, and Gustavus saw daylight before him. An 
alliance offensive and defensive was made at Coswig, Septem- 
ber 10, by which the elector agreed to give the Swedish army 
a month's pay, furnish it with rations, and admit it to his 
most important cities. All defiles were to be open to Gusta- 
vus and closed to the imperialists; the conduct of military 
affairs was to be left to Gustavus, and no peace was to be 
concluded without him. The king agreed to drive the impe- 
rialists from Saxony, and stand by John George to the last. 
Had Brandenburg and Saxony joined him a year before, what 
might not have been accomplished ! Hereupon, instant orders 
were given to break up, all available forces were called in to 
the colors, Horn was instructed to join the king, and the 
army crossed the Elbe at Wittenberg and headed for Diiben 
on the Mulde, the rendezvous with the Saxons. 

The " order of battle " in which they passed the bridge is 
interesting. On September 9 a cavalry detachment of five 
hundred men had crossed and been spread out as a curtain 
to cover the bridge ; and on September 12 Quartermaster- 
General Bouillon, with three hundred cavalry and a small 
wagon-train, joined them. The army itself began to cross 
September 13. First marched a vanguard of two thousand 
foot, a detachment of cavalry, and twelve guns drawn by 
teams of eleven to thirty-one horses ; ordnance and munition 
wagons came next, carts loaded with cannon-balls, nine regi- 
mental pieces with their munition wagons, all followed by 
four blue and white cornets. His majesty of Sweden in 
person followed, under special escort of two cavalry cornets, 
with black and gold pennants, his battle -charger led behind 
him ; and then several other cornets, blue and red, white, 
orange, yellow, red, blue, green. Behind these filed four 
royal six-horse canopy coaches and two royal baggage wagons, 
and again cavalry cornets, green, blue and red. Then fol- 



252 DECISION TO FIGHT. 

lowed the infantry regiments with their pieces and powder 
and ball carts, the baggage wagons and pack-horses; and 
then the bulk of the cavalry with all its baggage. Last filed 
the general wagon-column under escort of horse and foot. 

The army halted at Kernberg towards evening, and next 
day, September 14, it reached Diiben. 

From Torgau the elector reached the vicinity of Diiben 
September 15. Gustavus rode over to the Saxon army, 
warmly greeted the elector, and narrowly inspected the 
troops, which were drawn up in parade order. He estimated 
the six regiments each of horse and foot at twenty thousand 
men, though they are elsewhere given at sixteen thousand. 
A joint inspection of the Swedish army followed. There 
were twenty thousand foot and seventy-five hundred horse 
in line. 

At a council of war immediately succeeding these ceremo- 
nials, Gustavus advised a series of manoeuvres to tire out the 
imperial army and seek to place it at a disadvantage before a 
general battle. He spoke of his ability to do this as superior 
to Tilly's, and suggested the distress Brandenburg and Sax- 
ony would be in in case of a defeat. For himself, he said, 
he could retire beyond seas, for which purpose he had a good 
base to embark from and a fleet. Curiously, John George 
the procrastinator now urged immediate battle. He was 
anxious to save Saxony from the plundering to which it was 
being subjected, was unwilling to subsist two armies during 
the suggested manoeuvres, and had great confidence in the 
Swedish capacity for fighting. Gustavus was not loth to 
deliver battle, and it was determined to march without delay 
to the relief of Leipsic. On the 16th the allied army 
marched from Diiben to Wolkau. 

" In the early twilight of the 6th (16th N. S.) we passed 
through Diiben and reached the hamlet of Wolkau, one and 



NUMBERS UNCERTAIN. 253 

a half (German) miles from Leipsic, near evening," writes 
the king, from whose letters or dispatches comes a good bit of 
information ; " and here we rested over night. On the 7th 
(17th), in the gray of the morning, I ordered the bugles to 
sound the march, and as between us and Leipsic there were 
no woods, but a vast plain, I deployed the army into battle 
order and marched towards that city. After an hour and a 
half's march, we saw the enemy's vanguard with artillery on 
a hill in our front, and behind it the bulk of his army." 

It is not possible accurately to gauge the numbers of the 
two armies. Apparently good authorities differ, and even 
the Swedish records are at variance with regard to the 
Saxons. On the day of the battle the Swedes, according to 
the official list, had twenty-six thousand eight hundred men 
in line, viz. : nineteen thousand one hundred foot, and seven 
thousand seven hundred horse. The joint forces may have 
been forty-five thousand men. Neither can the strength of 
Tilly's army be justly given, but it no doubt fell a good deal 
short of forty thousand men. 

Until Frederick the Great astonished Europe with his 
grand-tactics, there are but few battles of modern times which 
exhibit novelty in manoeuvre. Armies met in a formal way, 
drew up in parallel order, advanced on each other, and there 
ensued a hand to hand conflict much wanting in the element 
of calculation or the utilization of favorable conditions ; who- 
ever stood the hammering or staved off demoralization the 
longer won. 

The battle of Breitenfeld was a good sample of retrieving, 
by quick decision and action, an impending disaster, of utiliz- 
ing an opportunity offered, of true battle-captain's work. It 
was not noteworthy for any special exhibition of what we now 
call grand-tactics, for it was not fought as it was intended it 
should be ; but it was essentially noteworthy as being the first 



254 OLD SPANISH TACTICS. 

great engagement in which the modern tactics of mobility, 
of which Gustavus Adolphus was the originator and expo- 
nent, were opposed to the Middle Ages tactics of weight ; in 
which the new Swedish was opposed to the old Spanish 
method. In this sense the contest was as interesting as the 
matching of phalanx against legion. 

The Spanish tactics, as already explained, consisted in 
marshaling heavy bodies — battalia or battles — of troops in 
such masses that their mere advance should be irresistible, 
and that they should break a charge of cavalry upon them as 
the cliff breaks up the waves. The line was set up with foot 
in heavy squares in the centre, and horse in heavy columns on 
the wings, and after the fire of the artillery and the charge of 
the squares had shaken the enemy, the duty of the horse was 
to ride him down. The infantry battalia were wont to con- 
sist of fifty files ten deep, of which mass the bulk was mere 
pushing, not fighting force ; and on the four corners stood 
groups of musketeers, two or three deep ; while other musket- 
eers were put out as skirmishers to protect the flanks of the 
battalia. Such was the Spanish battalion ; it was an oblong 
fortress with bastions at the corners, and surrounded by 
outworks. 

In these huge masses of human brawn the weapons were 
equally cumbersome. The pike was long and heavy, of use 
only to keep an opponent at a distance, not to demolish him 
by stroke of arm ; and the old musket, requiring ninety-nine 
" times and motions " to handle, and a crutch to lean it on to 
fire, was as slow and ineffective as the artillery. Nor was the 
cavalry much less lumbering. Like a child with a new toy, 
it had fallen in love with its firearms, had come to discard its 
shock-tactics, and had learned to rely on repeated salvos of 
its carbines or pistols. These salvos were delivered from 
near at hand, and the squadrons lost the momentum of the 



SWEDISH TACTICS. 255 

full gallop charge from a distance. It was really mounted 
infantry, one regiment differing from another only in weight 
of armor or weapons. No doubt all this had a defensive 
value ; but set it going at any pace, and it would fall apart 
by its own weight. 

What Gustavus had been introducing and practicing his 
troops to use, ever since he ascended the throne, was a gun 
which could be rapidly fired, and a formation in which men 
could readily manoeuvre. The Swedes had now next to no 
armor to hamper their movements ; their musket was so light 
as to need no crutch, and its wheel-lock was vastly better 
than the match-lock of the imperialists. In addition to this, 
Gustavus' artillery was immeasurably superior, and the regi- 
mental pieces could actually follow the regiments. 

Moreover, instead of these large bodies, which were in- 
tended to act together and be mutually dependent, the Swedes 
had a line made up of smaller battle groups, each of which 
was independent and self-sustaining. Gustavus had the habit 
not of collecting all his horse in a mass on each flank, but of 
alternating bodies of horse and foot in parts of the line itself. 
To soldiers brought up under the modern system, this forma- 
tion seems odd enough, but it well suited the fire of that day, 
as it had suited at times the ancient tactics ; bodies of cavalry 
need no longer dash uselessly against the battles, but the 
horse and foot were able to support each other in an advance. 
When the musketeers had broken the enemy by their fire, 
the horse pushed out and charged him. In retreat they 
worked equally well ; the musketeers protected the horse, and 
the horse prevented the broken foot from being ridden down. 
In the centre of the line the foot was not always mixed with 
horse ; but the units were smaller. The full Swedish brigade 
is stated at one thousand two hundred and twenty-four men, 
and was made up of either one strong or two or three weak 



256 SWEDISH BRIGADE. 

regiments. It was a sort of wedge of one body of pikemen 
backed by two others, and in the intervals and on the flanks 
bodies of musketeers who might break out, deploy to fire, and 
again retire into the brigade. At Breitenfeld the brigades 
stood in three lines. The sketch of Lord Reay was not the 
common order of the Swedish brigade formation, though it 

may have applied to foreign 
£ ( r— 1 bodies in Swedish service. 

i« j [T^XTq [UT^I gf3 |X?I^T RT^I Perhaps the difference exists 
UggM.| in the use of the words " half- 

I^m-hj |a.n, r| |iifu.Ml brigade " for what others 



it 



b l 



lUSKE-TEEffS P.= PIKE.BEN 



called " brigade." The leading 
Brigade and Half-brigade. half-brigade of Lord Keay's di- 

Lord Eeay's sketch. , , 1 , • 

agram corresponds to what is 
usually referred to as a brigade ; the rear half -brigade does not. 

As already explained, the line had been reduced to files 
three deep for firing in battle, though supposed to be six deep 
in fact ; the first rank knelt and the other two stood. This 
gave much more effective fire and reduced casualties. Fire 
was delivered by platoon or by rank, and each rank having 
fired had but two others to pass to go to the rear and load. 
In the imperial army it might have nine ranks to pass. 

What Gustavus gained in men by his shallow formation, 
he utilized by carefully marshaling his second line ; and what 
his first line lost in weight was made up by a second line or 
by reserves. It must not be supposed that the Swedish line 
lacked strength. It had nearly as many men, over six to the 
lineal metre of front, as the imperialists. Its organization 
gave it both power and elasticity. The two armies differed 
as a rigid cast-iron bar differs from an elastic steel sword- 
blade. The latter has life which the other lacks. 

We shall see how these two systems worked in the first 
general engagement where they fairly and squarely met. 



XX. 

BEEITENFELD. SEPTEMBER 17, 1631. 

The Leipsic plain is wide and flat, with here and there a rolling hillock good 
for artillery. Tilly had an admirable line, and a splendid array of veterans. 
He had never lost a great battle, and his men were eager to fight. The 
Swedes were not handsome, but the stuff was there. The Saxons were a 
bespangled lot, but they did not know what fighting meant. Tilly stood in a 
line of seventeen great battles, with Pappenheim and Fiirstenberg on the 
flanks, and with his guns admirably posted. Early astir, the Swedes marched 
towards the enemy with cheer. Brushing away Tilly's outposts, they came 
into line with the Saxons on their left. In the Swedish wings horse was mixed 
with the foot in alternate small detachments ; the right wing under Ban^r was 
principally horse ; the king led the centre, mostly of foot ; Horn on the left, 
with horse and foot. Each regiment had its guns, and the reserve artillery 
under Torstenson was on the left centre. The Saxon formation is not known. 
The battle opened with artillery, and restless Pappenheim rode out, unordered, 
to break the Swedish right ; but Bane^r met him manfully, and drove him off in 
flight. Next, Fiirstenberg charged in on the Saxons, and sent them flying to 
the rear. Tilly had viewed these unauthorized advances in dismay ; but the 
flight of the Saxons uncovered Gustavus' flank; he prepared to strike him 
there, and wheeled in upon him. Gustavus was ready. Forming a crotchet of 
his left, he reinforced Horn, and then, heading the cavalry of the right, he 
rode down the late line of battle, captured Tilly's guns, and turned them on 
the enemy. The centre swung round so as to prolong Horn's new line, and 
Torstenson's guns took Tilly's squares in flank. The battle was won ; but 
brave Tilly with his Walloons held firm until fairly torn to shreds. Then, 
thrice wounded, the old hero was borne off the field by his beaten troops d' elite. 
The victory was complete. Activity had proved superior to weight. 

The original intention of Tilly had been to operate defen- 
sively behind the Elster and Saale until his belated lieuten- 
ants should arrive, but Pappenheim had been hotly urging 
on his chief the necessity of at once quelling the spirit of the 



258 THE TWO ARMIES. 

Protestants by beating them in battle, as he had. no doubt 
unconquered Tilly could do. Few of the generals sustained 
the chief in waiting for reinforcements, and Tilly listened to 
the plea of his young and ardent officers. The events around. 
Leipsic brought the armies together, and after the capture 
of the city, Tilly sat down with his back to it to await the 
onmarch of the new allies. 

The plain north of Leipsic is admirably adapted for the 
evolutions of an army. It stretches for miles in either direc- 
tion with but slight accentuation, and what slopes do exist 
are as if created for the play of artillery. Tilly had previ- 
ously sent out and. intrenched some heights at Entritsch so 
as to hold the road from Diiben, and had selected for his line 
the elevation facing Podelwitz and. Gobschelwitz athwart the 
allied advance; his batteries, protected, in a slight way by 
earthworks, lay near the turnpike. 

While the Swedes and Saxons, in the gray of the morning 
of September 17, 1631, were preparing to cross the Lober- 
bach in their advance on Leipsic, Tilly led his brilliant 
column to these same heights and out beyond; and some 
time before the arrival of the allies, had drawn up his long 
array, with Breitenfeld to the rear of his left, a mile or so 
away, and Seehausen behind his right. The sun and wind 
were both at his back, a feature much in his favor. 

In contrast to the rough and rusty Swedes, Tilly com- 
manded a splendid-looking set of veterans. His army num- 
bered men who had followed him for years, and knew that 
he had never yet been conquered in a battle. Prominent 
among these were his Walloons, at the head of whom he 
took his stand on his white battle-charger, which was known 
to every man in line. As the rugged old veteran of seventy- 
two passed along, shouts of "Father Tilly!" rang from 
battalion to battalion. There was no feeling of uncertainty 



TILLY'S FORMATION. 259 

in the imperial army. That full-throated cheer presaged 
success. 

As variously computed, Tilly had from thirty-two to forty 
thousand men, of which a quarter was cavalry. He drew 
up the infantry in seventeen great battalia, of fifteen hun- 
dred to two thousand men each, in the centre, and ranged 
the horse in similar masses of about one thousand men, ten 
deep, on the flanks. Pappenheim with his famous black 
cuirassiers was on the left, Fiirstenberg, who had personally 
come up, was on the right, with the cavalry just back from 
Italy, under Isolani, in first line. Tilly is credited with 
but twenty-six guns. This was the number reported as 
captured by the Swedes, but it seems as if there must have 
been more. His guns were difficult to handle, but he would 
scarcely meet his new antagonist without an effort to place 
in line batteries more nearly equal to the Swedish, whose 
effectiveness he must well know. His heavy guns were 
placed between the right wing and the centre ; his light guns 
in front of the centre. « 

It has been asserted on the generally plausible ground of 
the custom of the day, that Tilly's army was drawn up in 
two lines. But all old pictures of the battle show but one 
line, and Tilly covered so great a stretch of front that, with 
his deep battalia, he had scarce enough men to form a 
regular second line. Only the Italian author Gualdo speaks 
of two lines; other accounts mention no second one. How- 
ever disposed, the imperial line was longer than the allied, 
considerably overlapping the Swedish. Tilly had many 
times won success by wheeling in on the enemy's flank, and 
he may have hoped to do so here. Not prolific of novelties 
in tactics, he based his faith on the time-tried manoeuvre. 
His men bound white kerchiefs in their hats, and the watch- 
word was "Jesu-Maria! " 



260 GUSTAVUS' FORMATION. 

With a small column of cavalry, Pappenheim had been 
sent forward to arrest the allied advance at the little stream 
Loberbach, if perchance some advantage might be had of 
them. 

At early daylight the Swedes had fallen into line, and 
advanced in battle order across the even plain from Wolkau, 
towards Leipsic. After an hour ■ and a half's march they 
ran across the enemy's van, and then caught sight of the 
imperial array on the slopes where it had taken up its stand. 
To cross the Loberbach, the armies were compelled to ploy 
into column, and here they encountered the skirmishers of 
Pappenheim ; but they threw them back, and crossed at the 
several fords. 

The Swedes held the right and centre; the Saxons the 
left; but the two armies fought as separate organizations. 
There is no record of the Saxon formation ; the Swedish may 
be of interest. The Saxons lay on the east of the Diiben 
road ; the Swedes on the west. 

The Swedish centre had in first line four brigades of foot 
under Generals Winkel, Carl Hall, Teuffel and Ake Oxen- 
stiern; in reserve to the first line the cavalry regiment of 
Ortenburg, and the Scottish infantry under Monroe and 
Ramsey. In second line the centre had three brigades, of 
which one Scotch under General Hepburn, and two German 
under Generals Vitzthum and Thurn. Behind this stood 
the reserve cavalry under Schafmann and Kochtitzky. 

At the head of the right whig, which was mostly cavalry, 
stood Field-Marshal Baner, second in command. In first 
line were the East Gothland, Smaland, West Gothland, and 
two Finland regiments under Tott; and the Wiinsch and 
Stalhandske regiments, the best of their kind. Between each 
two of the small cavalry divisions there was stationed a body 
of two hundred musketeers. In reserve was the Bhinegrave 



THE SAXONS. 261 

regiment. In second line stood the cavalry regiments of 
Sperreuter, Damitz, and the Courland and Livonia regi- 
ments. 

Field-Marshal Horn commanded the left wing. In first 
line stood the cavalry regiments of Baudissin, Calenbach and 
Horn, interspersed with the bodies of two hundred musket- 
eers already mentioned. There was no reserve to this first 
line. In second line came Courville's and Hall's cavalry 
regiments. Between each two cavalry divisions was the 
same body of two hundred musketeers. 

The regimental pieces were in front of the regiments; 
what we might call the reserve artillery was massed in front 
of the left centre under Torstenson. 

On the left of Horn came the Saxons, destined by their 
utter lack of discipline, not to say cowardice, to aid in win- 
ning the battle. 

The whole Swedish army wore hopeful green branches in 
their headgear, and the pass-word was "God with us!" 
Gustavus, who, despite his growing bulkiness, was always 
a noble figure, addressed the troops amid great enthusiasm. 
He wore but his common buff coat, and a gray hat with a 
green feather. Armor he had long ago discarded as uncom- 
fortable; for the Danzig bullet still lay in his shoulder, and 
he was irritated by the weight of the cuirass. He sought but 
the protection of the Almighty. 

The Saxon army was freshly equipped, and looked well. 
The imperialists wore gold and silver ornamented clothes, — 
the plunder of an hundred towns, — and from their headgear 
nodded fine plumes. Their horses were big showy Germans; 
the Swedish horses were small and gaunt. Compared to the 
other soldiers on this field, the Swedish peasant made a 
slender show; but the stuff was in him, as his fine friends 
and foes alike found out and long remembered. 




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PAPPENHEIM'S ERROR. 263 

So soon as they came within range, the imperial artillery 
began playing on the allies, and their marshaling took place 
under constant fire; but when the Swedish guns could be 
got up, they were put iu battery, and replied three shots for 
one. The advance and deployment of the allied line had 
taken till nearly noon, and for two hours and a half after 
that time, there was no exchange except a cannonade, which 
indeed went on during the whole day. 

Pappenheim's splendid cuirassiers had returned from the 
Loberbach and had taken place in line. All were now 
awaiting some incident to call for an opening attack; the 
imperialists expected the allies to advance, and Gustavus was 
making sure that all was ready, to give the signal call. 

Pappenheim was growing restless. He was bold and 
impatient. Having stood the Swedish artillery fire for a 
number of hours, he could contain himself no longer. Gath- 
ering his five thousand horse in hand, and without awaiting 
orders from his chief, he thundered down upon Baner, who 
held the Swedish right, galloping in on him at the head of 
the best cavalry division then in arms. Tilly recognized his 
lieutenant's mistake before he had ridden a hundred yards. 
"They have robbed me of my honor and my glory!" he 
cried, throwing up his arms in despair. 

In order to place his line where the disadvantage of dust 
would not be so great — the wind was southwest and the 
plain parched from a long drouth — Gustavus had, after 
crossing the Loberbach, moved well to his right, to establish 
his position. 

The idea of Pappenheim was that he could edge to the left 
enough to outflank the Swedes, and then, by a half right 
wheel, push in and destroy their flank. He did not know 
Baner. He forgot, too, that his advance would separate 
him from the main body of the army at a time when he 



264 PAPPENHEIM DEFEATED. 

might be sadly needed. His action was in every sense to 
blame. 

Not only was Pappenheim's advance an error, what was 
worse, it failed. 

The Swedish formation and excellent behavior easily with- 
stood the shock. The "commanded musketeers" — as the 
small bodies interspersed with the cavalry were called — 
received the cuirassiers with withering salvos, and between 
shots the Finns and Goths charged out on the horsemen 
with a gallantry which cheered the whole right flank. Baner 
at once understood the purpose of the brave but over-impetu- 
ous Pappenheim; and when the imperial commander turned 
from the Swedish front, and rode around its flank, he was 
met before he was ready by a stiff counter-charge from one 
of the cavalry regiments in reserve behind the first line. 
Not discouraged, though checked, Pappenheim renewed and 
renewed his charges. Seven times did he rally his men, and 
dash down upon the Swedish front and flank; but the mus- 
keteers — fit prototype of Fritz's Prussian foot — stood their 
ground as steadily in the hand to hand conflict as if they had 
been on parade, and the Swedish cavalry, though lighter by 
far, wavered not from their doughty resistance. The Hol- 
stein infantry regiment, which was sent by Tilly to Pappen- 
heim's support, was cut to pieces, and the duke fell at the 
head of his men. No impression whatever had been created 
by Pappenheim's advance; and even this preux chevalier was 
eventually thrown back, decimated and unnerved, was fol- 
lowed sharply by Bane*r and driven off the field. The wreck 
fled towards Halle, and Gustavus discreetly recalled the pur- 
suers to the line. 

It must be remembered that the cavalry charge of that 
day was not delivered at a gallop. The troops rather rode 
at a trot, and at a convenient distance halted to use their 



THE SAXONS RUN AWAY. 265 

firearms. So long as there was a volley left, they did not 
draw their swords. It was not a question of solid impact; 
cavalry was not then the "arm of the moment;" it fought 
like infantry on horseback, and the footman's "push of 
pike" was much more common than the horseman's cold 
steel, so long as the enemy showed a front. When he lost 
steadiness, came the cavalryman's chance; he could slash up 
broken infantry if he could not break it. 

On the allied left the result was different indeed. The 
charge of the imperial cavalry, under Fiirstenberg and 
Isolani, could not long be held back after Pappenheim had 
started on his gallant but mistaken ride; the squadrons 
drove forward, straight upon the Saxon array. Nor did 
they meet a line of Swedish veterans ; except for some efforts 
by the horse and artillery, they crushed in the Saxon forma- 
tion the moment they reached it ; and the loss of a few gun- 
ners, the unseating of a few officers, was enough to send the 
bespangled battalions of John George to the right-about. 
The elector was seized with an equal terror; he and his 
body-guard turned and spurred away to Eilenburg. In a 
short half hour the imperial cavalry of the right had driven 
the whole Saxon contingent — nearly half the army — from 
the field; having done which, it prepared to turn in upon 
the now naked left flank of the king of Sweden. 

The Swedish train behind the army caught the infection 
from the flying Saxons, and made its way to the rear, in 
much disorder. As non-combatants they were mostly hired 
Germans, on whose stanchness no reliance could be placed. 

The battle had begun without the orders of Father Tilly; 
it was running its course without any interference by him ; 
it was going quite against his wishes. But at this juncture, 
from his position in the centre, he was quick to see that the 
Saxon flight had opened a chance by which he might repair 



266 DISASTER TURNED INTO VICTORY. 

the errors already made, and win the day. The Swedish 
left was open; and Tilly's centre of irresistible Spanish 
battalia not only overlapped it, but he now outnumbered the 
king at least three to two. Moreover Tilly was compelled 
to act, for the fire from Torstenson's quick-served guns was 
growing deadlier every minute. He gave the order to 
advance in the wake of lurstenberg, and, in the belief that 
the king would not separate his left from his centre, obliqued 
to the right, so as to get well beyond Gustavus' left. The 
direction of his movement was to the east of the Diiben 
road; and be it said for the credit of Tilly's manoeuvring 
capacity, that a part of his heavy line of battalia was able 
to march obliquely to the right, make a partial wheel to the 
left, and still advance in serried ranks against the position 
where, when it started out over two hours before, had stood 
the Swedish naked flank; while Eurstenberg rode further to 
the north, to come down upon its rear. 

But Gustavus was alive to the danger, and Horn could 
manoeuvre twice as fast as the best of Tilly's battles. Under 
Gustavus' instructions Horn smartly wheeled his wing to 
the left, threw out detachments to hold the ditches of the 
Diiben road, and was ready to meet the imperial general 
long before he reached the spot; while the king, hastily 
drawing Vitzthum's and Hepburn's brigades from the second 
line of the centre, threw them in to sustain the new line on 
the left. The fight here was thus established on a safe basis, 
and despite their heroic charges the Swedes drove the impe- 
rial cavalry back, and were ready to attack the battalia when 
they should put in their appearance. 

Now came the moment for Gustavus and his mobile line, 
and the king grasped it in a twinkling. Riding back to the 
right, he gave hurried orders to Bauer, and heading the 
West Gothland horse down along: the front of the Swedish 



A SUPERB MANOEUVRE. 



267 




Battle of Breitenfeld. (2d Phase.) 



line, he sent them charging at a furious gallop in on the 
flank of Tilly's battles. Here it was cold steel; not a volley 
was fired, but the squadrons dashed straight at the enemy 
with the momentum of a 
pas de charge. Gustavus 
himself waited but to seize 
the Smalanders, East 
Gothlanders and Finns, — 
four regiments, — and fol- 
lowed hard along, bearing 
to the right up the slope 
where still stood the im- 
perial guns. These were 
heavy and hard to move, 
and the king and his 
horsemen swept over them wholesale, captured them in a 
trice, sabred the gunners where they stood, and in a few 
minutes turned the battery against the flank of Tilly's line, 
now standing at bay where the brave old soldier had hoped 
to turn the tide. Never, in modern days, had the chances 
of battle been improved by so rapid, so masterly, so bold a 
manoeuvre. 

The temporary promise of success of the imperial right, 
and the failure of its left, had thus given a new and curious 
direction to the line of battle. The Swedish left stood 
almost at right angles to where it had first been marshaled, 
with Tilly, in more or less irregular order from his unwonted 
manoeuvre, facing it. The king had captured Tilly's origi- 
nal position, and was not only pounding the imperialists 
with their own cannon-balls, but Torstenson had swung round 
his reserve artillery, which had stood in front of the Swedish 
centre, and was pouring the contents of his munition wagons, 
on a line parallel to the late Swedish front, into the huge, 



268 SPLENDID FIGHTING. 

defiant squares. Gustavus now made a general wheel to the 
left by his centre and right, so as to prolong the new front 
of Horn. He had already, by capturing the imperial bat- 
teries, cut the enemy off from Leipsic, but the battle was 
still to be won, and there was a fierce and prolonged hand 
to hand fight along the Diiben road. With all the artillery 
in his hands and all the cavalry now left upon the field, it 
could, however, end but one way. It was solely a question 
of how complete the victory should be; of what losses the 
imperialists would stand before their resistance was turned 
into flight ; of how tough Father Tilly was. 

Tilly's veterans fought in a way to preserve their own 
fame and their general's reputation. Standing at bay with 
the Swedish array on two sides of them, torn by the fire of 
their own and the enemy's guns; with their cavalry in dis- 
tant flight, no reserves to aid, no hope of anything but 
destruction, the battles of Tilly stuck manfully to their task. 
Gaps were torn in their ranks to no purpose. There they 
stood, partly from gallant love of their rough old chief, 
partly from the sheer inertia of their massed formation, — 
as the ranks of Porus had stood at the Hydaspes, as the 
Russian hollow square would stand at Kunersdorf . Finally, 
towards nightfall, the stampede began. Once begun, it 
spread fast, and shortly, save a small body of braves who 
surrounded Tilly, the infantry battalia melted into a mass 
of fugitives. There was no organization left. Pappen- 
heim's famous horsemen had hours ago been broken, and 
with Furstenberg's had fled; and Tilly's battles crumbled 
before the activity of the Swedish onslaught. 

The Saxon guns were recaptured by the Swedes. The 
imperial army lost seven thousand killed, six thousand 
wounded and captured, all its artillery, ninety flags and the 
whole train. The rest of the army fled in every direction, 



GUSTAVUS PURSUES. 269 

mostly towards Halle, whither, thrice wounded and scarcely 
escaping capture, Tilly also made his way, and from thence 
to Halberstadt. Here he joined Pappenheim, collected what 
he could of his forces, and retired to the line of the 
Weser. 

It is related that, so soon as the battle was fairly won, 
Gustavus dismounted, kneeled on the blood-stained field, 
and offered up thanks to the Giver of Victory, while all near 
by him joined earnestly in his pious act. With Gustavus 
such sincerity was inbred, — like the unspoken battle prayers 
of Stonewall Jackson. 

The king, whose loss had not exceeded twenty-one hun- 
dred killed and wounded, left the Saxon contingent to cap- 
ture Leipsic, and followed up the retreating imperialists. 
With his usual push he himself headed a body of fifteen 
hundred horse, and at Merseburg, on September 19, overtook 
a considerable detachment, beat it, and captured three thou- 
sand prisoners. He occupied Halle, September 21, but did 
not pursue beyond the Saale, for he wished to be secure in 
his foothold in Saxony before he moved decisively into 
western or southern Germany. The imperial garrison in 
Leipsic surrendered September 23, and the Saxons returned 
to Torgau. 

After lying some time in the Halberstadt region, Tilly 
moved to the Weser, where he recovered his strength rapidly. 
"Whose house doth burn, Must soldier turn" was true, and 
he found plenty of recruits. 

Breitenfeld, the first great battle of the modern era, is 
peculiar in more than one way. Counting out the Saxons, 
who were but a source of weakness, the king was heavily 
outnumbered, and was attacked successively and in force on 
both flanks, in a manner which on more than one occasion 
has proved fatal to an army. Attempted flank attacks some- 



270 THE PROTESTANT HERO. 

times open gaps in the line which delivers them, and result 
in more harm to it than gain made against the enemy. In 
this case, the flank attacks, while not lacking in direction 
and vigor, were met with great constancy; and Pappenheim's 
being delivered without orders, took the control of the battle 
out of the hands of the general in command. The situation 
which led up to Tilly's overthrow was none of his making, 
though Pappenheim afterwards complained of not being sup- 
ported in his first charge, and it was Tilly's putting all his 
strength into the manoeuvre on the naked Swedish left flank 
which practically broke up his line. This would not have 
happened had Tilly been faced by a line of slow-moving bat- 
tles; and few generals, in any era, would have neglected so 
apparently good an opening. It was the Swedish mobility, 
led by Gustavus' splendid vigor, and his true coup d'oeil 
to seize the moment and order the manoeuvre needed, which 
won the battle, rather than Tilly's errors which lost it. 
Against a heavy line like his own the imperial general 
would doubtless have been victorious, despite the error of 
Pappenheim. 

Gustavus was at once recognized as the Protestant Hero. 
Those who had looked askance at him, who had likened him 
to Christian of Denmark, were now vociferous in his praise ; 
those who had feared to join his standard by word or deed, 
lest heavy retribution should await them in case of failure, 
now openly declared for him. All Germany was overrun 
with pamphlets to laud him, with pictures and medals of 
Gustavus the Great. For once the Catholic press and pam- 
phleteers were silenced. Their defeat had been too over- 
whelming. Nothing could be said to excuse it. 

The spirit of the Swedes was as much heightened by this 
victory as the king had gained in glory. The enlistment of 
prisoners and the gathering up of garrisons swelled the ranks 



THE SWEDES ELATED. 



271 



of the Protestant allies. A new army assembled on the 
lower Elbe; Tott besieged Rostock, while Landgrave Wil- 
liam and Duke Bernard held Fugger in check, cleaned 
Hesse-Cassel of imperial troops, and made enterprising raids 
into adjoining Catholic territory. 




GUSTAVE ADOLPHE, ROI Dfc SUEDE. 
fPcint par Michicl Van Micrcvelt ci grave par W S, DolfT, iti33.| 



XXI. 

TOWARDS THE MAIN. SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER, 1631. 

In fourteen months Gustavus had not only securely established his bastion, 
but at Breitenfeld had quite changed the aspect of the cause ; all laggards 
now crowded around him with offers of help. Tilly retired behind the 
Weser ; the Catholics saw in the Snow King a dangerous opponent ; and the 
Protestant prospects were flattering. Even Wallenstein aspired to serve the 
king, but Gustavus mistrusted him. With Saxony and Brandenburg as allies, 
Gustavus moved confidently to the Erfurt country, through Thuringia to the 
Main, and to the bishoprics dubbed the Priest's Alley, leaving John George to 
command an operation towards Silesia. Many thought the king should march 
direct on Vienna ; but it was method, not temerity, which distinguished Gus- 
tavus, and he preferred not to prejudice what was already won. Tilly was 
watched by a minor column, and the king pushed on to the Main. He used 
his mterior lines ; every strip gained was carefully guarded ; treaties were 
made with the lands he crossed, and with the free cities, such as Niirnberg. 
The Main was reached early in October, Wurzburg and its castle taken, contri- 
butions levied, and the Jesuits banished. Tilly meanwhile raised a new army, 
marched to Aschaffenburg, joined the duke of Lorraine, and began to operate 
timorously in the region south of the Main, with near forty thousand men. 

Only fourteen months had elapsed since Gustavus had 
landed in Germany, but by his far-seeing, cautious and 
well-digested plans, crowned by the decisive victory of Brei- 
tenfeld, he had completely changed the prospects of the 
Protestants. He had secured a firm footing in northern 
Germany, where he held all but a few of the strong places 
down to Saxony, and had isolated these. His communica- 
tions with Sweden were secured by the control of the sea, 
and he had practically established his long-coveted Domi- 
nium Maris Baltici. After many and vexatious delays he 



THE SNOW KING. 273 

had concluded treaties with Brandenburg, Saxony, Hesse- 
Cassel and Weimar, and was strengthened by accessions of 
troops, tendered and promised from many other quarters. 
On landing, the horizon was dark and unpromising; the sky 
had now cleared, and the sun of success blazed forth to cheer 
the hearts of all. 

As Gustavus had gained in moral weight, so his army had 
gained in aplomb and confidence. His operations had at times 
appeared slow and cautious, but they had been sure, and, 
what is better, were justified by the results. He had met 
with but one serious failure, — Magdeburg, — and this was 
chargeable to the elector of Saxony. Breitenfeld had placed 
him on the most prominent pedestal in Europe. The Catholics 
no longer looked de hant en has on the "Snow King." He 
was a redoubtable opponent as well as the Protestant Hero, 
— the "Lion of the North and Bulwark of the Faith." The 
imperialists had lost in spirit and organization all that the 
Swedes had gained. Their retreat to the Weser opened 
the heart of the emperor's possessions to the king's thrust, 
with but a trivial force in the way. The emperor's authority 
had received from his "new little enemy" an almost fatal 
blow, and the Protestants of north and west Germany, who, 
cowed into submission, had feared to welcome the uncertainty 
of Swedish aid, now rose, and with hearty good-will enlisted 
under Gustavus' standards. These fourteen months had 
distinctly shifted the moral superiority from the Catholic to 
the Protestant party. Gustavus had risen beyond being 
king of Sweden. He was now the leader of the attack in 
a great German war, in which the task he had undertaken 
was to establish beyond future question the equality of 
religions all over the land. But the work was not yet in 
a condition to leave to others. Gustavus had put his hand to 
the plow, and might not look back. It required the same 



274 TERROR OF CATHOLICS. 

wise and vigorous action in the future, to complete the struc- 
ture which had been so well builded in the past. 

Tilly's lamentable failure to withstand the Swedish advance 
began again to draw attention to Wallenstein, who had been 
nursing his wrath in a species of court in his Bohemian 
castles, or nursing his gout in Karlsbad. The terror which 
had been engendered by Gustavus' successes on the Oder now 
sank into insignificance before the terror inspired by the 
battle of Breitenfeld. The walls of cities hundreds of miles 
distant from the scene of action were kept manned; Bohe- 
mian forests were laid low to block the roads upon which it 
was feared that the king might advance; in Prague they 
equipped a new army; in the Ingolstadt churches they 
prayed to be "delivered from the devil and the Swedes, the 
Finns and the Lapps." Vienna was said to be "dumb with 
fright;" the emperor was so nearly at the end of his wits, 
say some questionable chroniclers, that he sought means of 
bringing about peace, and even contemplated flight to Gratz. 
Universal terror pointed the world to Wallenstein. Only 
he could inspire confidence ; the popular sentiment was in his 
favor, in the army and outside. 

It is a curious fact that of the noted soldiers of the Thirty 
Years' War, only Pappenheim was a German, and while 
Pappenheim was a bold and able lieutenant, he was killed 
before he rose to higher command. Gustavus was a Swede ; 
Wallenstein was a Czech ; Tilly a Walloon ; Turenne a French- 
man; of the minor generals, the only German who won repute 
was Bernard of Weimar, and he forfeited his all at Nord- 
lingen. 

Oddly, Wallenstein had been looking in another direction, 
— towards his old antagonist, Gustavus. Approaches are 
said to have been made to him about these days by England; 
they certainly were by the Swedish monarch, and these 



WALLENSTEIN'S OPPORTUNITY. 275 

Wallenstein had not thrust aside, though he openly denied 

them. Tilly heard the rumor of such negotiations and taxed 

the Czech with it; but Wallenstein reassured him. In the 

same way Gustavus sought to influence Arnim, so as to 

reach Saxony. He was not above any honorable means to 

accomplish his end, and Wallenstein was in no man's 

employ. Nor would it have made any odds if he had been. 

Like the rest he was a mercenary, even if a great one. Still 

more important to the fortunes of Germany, Wallenstein 

stood in correspondence with Arnim. It was in keeping 

with the spirit of the times that these secret negotiations 

should go on. Save Gustavus, scarce a potentate in Europe 

had a disinterested servant. The great Bohemian, unlike 

most of his contemporaries, was not hide-bound by religion. 

He had broader aims, and would have welcomed an era of 

tolerance, in which he could strive for a German empire, 

under the Hapsburgs, to be upheld by himself as military 

chief. In another sense Gustavus had equal aspirations, 

but not for the German crown. 

His dismissal from command had hit Wallenstein hard. 
v 
In the summer of 1631 he undoubtedly stood ready to enter 

into an alliance with Gustavus, and to serve the Protestant 

cause, to revenge his wrongs on Ferdinand. Gustavus was 

almost on the point of intrusting him with an army, but it 

is doubtful if, in the Swedish service, Wallenstein would 

have proved a success. Then came the battle of Breitenfeld; 

and the emperor began once more to look towards his ancient 

general. But Wallenstein was disinclined to listen, and for 

a while it appeared as if the three strongest men in Europe 

— Gustavus, Richelieu, and Wallenstein — were to form an 

anti-Hapsburg triumvirate. 

Now that Gustavus had shown his strength, the Anhalt 

princes joined the cause. They made a treaty at Halle to 



276 WHAT ROUTE? 

pay three thousand rix dollars a month, to build forts and 
bridges as directed by the king and at their own cost, to 
hold their strong places and denies for the Swedes while 
denying passage to the emperor, and generally to act under 
Gustavus' direction, in exchange for the protection afforded 
by the alliance. 

As when Magdeburg was crying aloud for succor, there 
was again more than one road open to Gustavus. He must 
choose his plan. Should he move against west Germany and 
the beaten army of Tilly, who was now basing himself on 
the Catholic princes of the Rhine; should he march through 
the Thuringian forest on Franconia and the "Priest's 
Alley;" or should he move southeastward, on the emperor's 
hereditary possessions ? At a council of war held at Halle 
shortly after the victory, the elector of Saxony and William 
of Weimar were present. John George had recovered from 
the disgrace of his own and his army's flight from the battle- 
field, for Gustavus had treated him, as he could well afford 
to do, with an easy touch. After the battle the king had 
sent to congratulate him on the victory, and to thank him 
for having suggested an immediate movement on the enemy, 

— and dull John George was as far from appreciating the 
touch of satire in the facts as Gustavus was from intending 
any slur. At this council Oxenstiern and many others 
advised a march on Vienna. Count Horn made a strong 
military plea for it. A summary operation, they thought, 
against the emperor in his capital would bring him to a 
peace which would set all the questions of Europe at rest. 
There were few forces — perhaps ten thousand men under 
Tiefenbach in Silesia, and less in Bohemia under Maradas 

— to oppose such a march, and the elector of Saxony prom- 
ised to care for the southwest. That the sentiment was 
strongly in favor of such a project is shown by the fact that, 



AN ADVANCE ON VIENNA? 277 

twenty years afterwards, Oxenstiern reiterated, his opinion 
before the senate in Stockholm that such a march would 
have been the wisest one to make. The chancellor could be 
venturesome on occasion. 

But though not slow to see the advantages suggested, the 
plan did not meet with the king's idea of a systematic 
method of carrying on the campaign ; nor, be it said to his 
honor, did it chime with the pledges he had given his Protes- 
tant friends. So far results had come, not from the bold- 
ness, but the caution of his operations. What he had won 
and held was by intelligently securing each step as he pro- 
gressed, and by doing nothing which had not its place in the 
general plan. Still, as was his wont, the king weighed care- 
fully all the pros and cons, and listened patiently to every 
suggestion. 

Small confidence could be felt in the ability of the Saxon 
army, beaten so easily at Breitenfeld, to do satisfactory work 
against imperial forces in the Main country, if Ferdinand 
should order a concentration there. John George, and espe- 
cially Arnim, would be glad to control the south German 
territory; for John George had political and financial 
schemes to push there, and Arnim his Third Party business ; 
none of which appealed to Gustavus' common sense. The king- 
preferred personally to undertake south Germany, while the 
Saxons should sustain a force of twelve thousand Swedes, and 
a Bohemian army to be placed under Wallenstein's command 
(should he be won over), and the latter with this force might 
push on to Vienna. Moreover, Gustavus never quite lost 
his anxiety as to his communications, for he reposed no faith 
in the constancy of John George or George William, and 
could still conceive the possibility, even if remote, of Saxony 
and Brandenburg rising behind him, should he be too far 
distant. A single check in a movement on Vienna by his 



278 THE KING'S IDEA. 

main force would be surely fatal. He knew the iron will of 
Ferdinand, and did not believe that even the sack of his 
capital would bring him to terms. The emperor had already 
been tried in this matter, — and Vienna at that day was not 
the capital which it now is. Like the Madrid of the eigh- 
teenth century, it might be taken by an enemy a dozen times 
without affecting the war. Ferdinand might retire to the 
south and involve Gustavus in an extremely dangerous stern 
chase. Nor was a march on Vienna the best way to compel 
the withdrawal of the Edict of Restitution. Nothing but 
Gustavus' presence could stay Tilly from visiting on any of 
the Protestant cities the fate of Magdeburg. The king 
must consider the work to be done before winter, and decide 
where he might best dispose his troops. Along the Main 
lay the rich Catholic bishoprics, — and here he could not only 
victual his men, but repair the wrongs of his brother Protes- 
tants. How much more negotiation was needful to induce 
the Protestant princes to work together was uncertain. 
Breitenfeld had changed people's faces, but the king had 
not forgotten his long struggle with Brandenburg and Sax- 
ony, and he believed that a single failure would renew the 
doubtful attitude of most of his present supporters. 

The king's immediate idea was that he would personally 
move to the Erfurt country for winter-quarters, and govern 
his further operations from there. Not that he would dis- 
perse his men, but he would accumulate magazines, and 
make his own headquarters here, while the troops lay in 
Thuringia, with Hesse, Weimar and Saxony near by; and 
from here he would move on the Franconian bishoprics, 
compel contributions, recruit up an army for a brilliant cam- 
paign in 1632, and utilize the winter to consolidate his con- 
quests, and to bring his allies to work in unison and furnish 
men and money as well as smiles and promises. Tilly must 



NO MARCH ON VIENNA. 279 

be considered; but the king deemed it sufficient to secure his 
own right by defensive means against him and the Rhineland 
princes, and his proposal to occupy, free and arm south- 
western Germany would cut Tilly off from Bavaria and the 
emperor ; while, if successful, it would win as firm a footing 
in western Germany as he already had in northern. All 
parties agreed that it was not worth while to follow Tilly to 
the Weser. Such an advance with his main force would 
be taking the king away from his general direction, which 
should lead to southern Germany and towards the emperor. 
Though he must not be overlooked, operations against Tilly 
need not be conducted by the main force; a part of the 
allied armies, while protecting the king's flank, could pre- 
vent the imperialists gaining dangerous headway. 

The march on Vienna was given over. Gustavus pre- 
ferred to operate from his interior lines against all his 
enemies at the same time. With his main force he would 
move through Thuringia and Franconia to Swabia, to rouse 
southern Germany into activity, and gain a vantage-ground 
from which to attack Bavaria. When he should have 
secured the whole region from the lower Oder to the middle 
andf upper Rhine, he could operate against Bavaria and 
Austria from the west. Meanwhile the Saxon, and perhaps 
Wallenstein's, campaign against Silesia, Bohemia and Mora- 
via would secure the king's left in his advance, and keep 
up the semblance of an operation against Vienna; and the 
army of Hesse-Cassel and Weimar would operate against 
Tilly, prevent his venturing into western Germany, and 
secure the king's right. No doubt this plan was the wisest, 
though it did not suit all the Swedish generals, as it cer- 
tainly did not satisfy the king's paymaster, Richelieu. But 
this far-seeing statesman did not withdraw his financial sup- 
port. 



280 LOSSAU'S CRITICISM. 

The plan thus finally adopted by Gustavus has been much 
criticised by soldiers. Folard likens his declination to march 
on Vienna to that of Hannibal, who failed to march on 
Rome after the overwhelming victory of Cannse. The com- 
parison — though not so intended — is an apt one. Both 
Gustavus and Hannibal were right in their action. 

Lossau gives a better set of reasons. Tilly, he argues, 
was beaten, but he should, with lugger and Aldringer, have 
been followed up and annihilated. For this purpose, eight to 
ten thousand men under Horn or Baner sufficed; and when 
the work was accomplished, the corps could rejoin the main 
army. The elector of Saxony could easily manage the prob- 
lem of the south German states with a small force, — there 
being no great opposition there, and could lend Gustavus a 
large part of his forces for a march on Vienna, which there 
was at the moment no organized army to oppose. Through 
Bohemia and Moravia the Swedish army could be easily 
victualed, and such a march might have made the subsequent 
raising of Wallenstein's army impossible. In the event, 
he says, Gustavus was compelled to operate on the Danube 
under much less favorable conditions. On the Baltic, in 
Saxony, in Bohemia, in Westphalia, in Hesse, in Thuringia, 
in Franconia, everything went well for Gustavus ; ill for the 
emperor. Ferdinand had but fifty thousand men; he had 
lost more than half Germany; Hungary was threatened; 
Bavaria was unreliable ; the Protestants of Upper and Lower 
Austria were in revolt. What better time for Gustavus to 
push home than the present ? 

All this is fair and proper criticism. But, prior to Gus- 
tavus' advent in Germany, there had been, in the history 
of the Christian era, many bold operations, and there had 
been no methodical ones. It was method that Gustavus was 
to teach in war, not alone boldness. This last quality is 



GUSTAVUS' ORDERS. 281 

common, when taken by itself; combined with discretion it 
is rare. As Alexander would not advance into the heart of 
Persia until he had acquired as a base the entire eastern 
Mediterranean coast; as Hannibal declined after both Trasi- 
mene and Cannse to march on Rome; as Caesar, after 
crossing the Rubicon, took all the towns on the Adriatic 
before he would march to the capital, so Gustavus now 
decided to make sure of what he had, and to risk nothing for 
a questionable gain. In the purely military aspect, he was 
right; taking the political factors into account, doubly so. 

In pursuance of this general scheme — which was far- 
sighted, reckoned on all the political and military factors, 
paid due heed to the demands of his Protestant allies, 
and had a basis of broad but to the world novel military 
judgment — the Swedish monarch set to work. Baner was 
ordered to leave a garrison in Landsberg, to deliver up pos- 
session of Frankfort and Crossen to the elector of Branden- 
burg, to take command of the Saxon army when it should 
be in condition for the field, to draw in the Havel and 
Werben garrisons, and to assume a strong position near 
Calbe on the Elbe, building forts at Rosenburg and Dessau, 
the mouths of the Saale and the Mulde. He was to send 
a cavalry force to take Halberstadt, and to aim at capturing 
Magdeburg; in fact, Baner was to clear the western skirts 
of the bastion of all imperialists and then to watch it. 

Tott, who lay on the lower Elbe, with the same end in 
view was instructed to seek helpful alliances in the Bruns- 
wick-Liineburg-Lauenburg territory, and with the free cities 
of Bremen, Liibeck and Hamburg. He was to besiege 
Rostock, and capture the outstanding towns in the Bremen 
region. All recruits to arrive from England, Scotland and 
the Netherlands — and they were a large body — were to 
land in the Weser and join Tott. 



282 STRATEGIC CHANGE. 

Oxenstiern was instructed to order sundry Prussian gar- 
risons to Pomerania, from which most of the seasoned troops 
had been drawn. He had already reported in person to the 
kino-, who was glad to have him near at hand as an adviser. 

Starting on September 27 from Halle, the king, with 
twenty-six thousand men, headed for Thuringia, by way of 
Querfurt. He was not sure that he could push beyond this 
section before winter. 

On October 2 Erfurt, one of the chief cities of the elector 
of Mainz, primate of Catholic Germany, was seized by a 
clever stratagem of Duke William, and after much discus- 
sion agreed to serve the cause, and was strongly garrisoned. 
Here a final treaty was made with the four brothers of the 
house of Saxe-Weimar. 

The operations of the year had brought about a change in 
the strategic position. In securing his bastion on the Baltic, 
Gustavus had a base which called for a front of operations 
running east and west, from say Landsberg to Werben. 
He now found himself backing on the Elbe and Saale. His 
rear was protected by the Frankfort-Crossen line, and no 
enemy was near it except Tiefenbach in Silesia. Along the 
Elbe-Saale he lay practically facing west, with the centre 
point of operations at Erfurt, and groups of forces on his 
right extending down the Elbe. These groups, under Tott 
and Baner, on completing their work would join Landgrave 
William in the Saale region; while the Royal Army would 
push through the Thuringian Forest to the Werra, and on 
through Franconia to the Main. This advance would help 
the forces on the Oder by driving back the enemy, as well 
as aid the Saxons in their advance through Silesia and 
Bohemia. But until the imperial allies along the Rhine, 
with the Spanish Netherlands at their back, could be neu- 
tralized, Gustavus could not safely extend his base so as to 
project a line of advance on the heart of the empire. 



GUSTAVUS' FORCES. 283 

At Erfurt the forces controlled by Gustavus and expected 
to be raised were substantially as follows : The Royal Army 
numbered eighteen thousand foot, six hundred dragoons and 
seventy-five hundred cavalry, which it was purposed to 
increase by eleven thousand foot and seventy-five hundred 
horse. Baner had four thousand men in the field and thirty- 
five hundred in garrison, which were to be increased by 
six thousand and twenty-six hundred respectively. Tott 
had five thousand five hundred Swedes and eight thousand 
Mecklenburgers, plus ten thousand eight hundred in garri- 
son; all to be increased by six thousand Dutch 'troops, five 
thousand recruits, eight thousand in new regiments and 
thirty - five hundred Swedish cavalry. Hesse - Cassel had 
ten thousand men, to be increased by seven thousand; and 
Weimar was to raise eleven thousand five hundred. Thus 
the seventy thousand men already under the colors, it was 
hoped, would be nearly doubled. These calculations were 
well borne out by the promise. 

As Bernard preferred to serve immediately under the 
king, Gustavus left the reigning duke, William of Weimar, 
in command of the Thuringian territory, to recruit for the 
above contingents, and gave him as a nucleus twenty-six 
hundred foot and four hundred horse. 

How far Gustavus planned his advance from Erfurt can- 
not be said; but he sent embassies to Bayreuth and to 
Nurnberg to pave the way. He took no step in the dark. 
The army advanced through the Thiiringerwald range in 
two columns : one via Gotha and Meiningen, one under the 
king in person via Arnstadt (October 7), Ilmenau and 
Schleusingen (October 8), where headquarters were estab- 
lished. The two columns reunited at the fortress of Konio-s- 
hofen, the key to the bishopric of Wiirzburg, which suc- 
cumbed only to Torstenson's heavy guns, and was left with 
a strong garrison. 



284 



PRIESTS AND FRIARS DECAMP. 




o 



The next place essential to clear the country between the 
Saale and the Main was Schweinfurt, which surrendered, 
and received a sure commandant with a suitable garrison. 
Gustavus was greeted by the laity as the harbinger of free- 
dom, but there was a great flight of priests and friars. He 
issued a proclamation covering all kinds and conditions of 



JESUIT PROPERTY CONFISCATED. 285 

men. He had come, lie said, to protect the Protestants 
from further injustice; but all, whatever their faith, who 
obeyed the law, would be protected from injury. Arrived 
October 13 at Wurzburg, the capital of Franconia, whose 
prince-bishop had fled, the town capitulated October 15; 
but the garrison and chief inhabitants retired with their 
valuables to the castle of Marienburg, on the further bank, 
where they deemed themselves quite beyond reach. 

This castle lies on a high rock, perpendicular on the water 
side, but approachable from the land. The gate was pro- 
tected by a deep ditch, with a half -moon outwork; there 
were no other defenses. The bridge over the Main had been 
broken down, but this was repaired; Colonel Ramsay was 
sent over it, and Colonel Leslie put across in boats, each with 
a detachment, under a heavy fire, by which they suffered 
considerably. The place refused terms, and the Swedes 
opened lines and erected batteries. After the destruction 
of one of the towers, on October 18, about 5 A. m., the 
castle was stormed by several regiments, led by Colonels 
Lillie and Burt. Though stoutly defended, the party 
gained the half -moon with ladders, and drove out the garri- 
son, pursuing which through the drawbridge, let down for 
the fugitives, the Swedes pushed on, blew down the gate, 
and captured the place. Immense booty was taken, as 
Marienburg was the strongest place on the Main, and had 
been made a storehouse for valuables; a vast amount of ord- 
nance-stores was got; and the bishop's valuable library was 
sent to Upsala University. Wurzburg was mulcted eighty 
thousand rix dollars, and town and castle were strengthened 
and suitably held. All Jesuit property was confiscated, but 
no persi d. The Jesuit was, according to Gus- 

tavus, / generis, and was treated accordingly. 

Protest; is restored. 



286 GUSTAVUS OUTWITTED. 

At Wiirzburg was made a treaty between the king and 
the Franconian Circle; the duke of Liineburg came with 
offers to raise some regiments ; and an embassy from Wiir- 
temberg arrived. With Niirnberg, after long negotiations 
and delays, a treaty offensive and defensive was concluded 
October 21, and the city raised a garrison of three thousand 
foot and two hundred and fifty horse, and strengthened its 
defenses. Similar treaties were made with Anspach and 
Bayreuth. At the same time a demand was made on the 
bishop -electors of Cologne, Mainz and Trier to acknowledge 
Gustavus' authority; to pay forty thousand rix dollars a 
month; to furnish provisions; to open forts and defiles to 
the Swedes, and to deny these to the emperor; and to give 
Protestants full religious equality with Catholics. Recruit- 
ing had good results. Franconia was rich; it had suffered 
little from the war; and its joining the cause was a marked 
gain. Business kept Gustavus in Wiirzburg a month. 

The progress of the Swedes began to excite terror all 
through Catholic Germany; some of the princes were con- 
tent to accept the situation, some fled, some showed a bold 
front. The bishop of Bamberg, to gain time, entered into 
feigned negotiations with Gustavus, who decided to press 
on to the Rhine, and wished to avoid a present expedition 
up the Main; by which ruse the bishop managed to hold his 
possessions until Tilly later came to the rescue. He cleverly 
baffled the king, — as a rule a difficult matter. 

After his defeat at Breitenfeld, as already narrated, Tilly 
had made his way north, with the relics of his army, a mere 
disorganized mob, of which barely half were armed. On 
September 20 he reached Halberstadt, where Pappenheim 
joined him; thence he marched to Hildesheim, crossed the 
Weser at Corvey near Hoxter, and drew in the Cologne 
troops on September 23. Hearing that Gustavus had headed 



UNLUCKY LORRAINE. 287 

south to Thuringia, after a while he himself turned towards 
Hesse. Early in October, at Fritzlar, Aldringer, who from 
Jena had retired via Erfurt, and Fugger joined him, giving 
Tilly eighteen thousand foot, and half as much cavalry. 

Seeing that Gustavus still continued onward to the Main, 
Tilly moved in the same direction by way of Fulda and 
Aschaff enburg, so as to move around the head of the Swedish 
advance, cross the Main, and work south of the king, to 
regain possession of Wurzburg. He had in view to join to 
his own forces the thirteen thousand men of the shifty duke 
of Lorraine, who had made a treaty with the emperor, had 
crossed the Khine in September at Worms, and was moving 
on Aschaffenburg. But the duke did not escape disaster. 
As it happened, Gustavus had gone down the Main, recon- 
noitring. On November 2, not many miles from Wurzburg, 
he ran across the enemy's van of four thousand men. Send- 
ing back for Baudissin's body of four thousand horse and 
two thousand musketeers, he fell on the enemy's camp not 
far from Bischofsheim and dispersed the entire body. The 
duke retired, with the relics, on his main body, managed to 
join Tilly hi Miltenburg, and the joint forces amounted to 
some thirty-eight thousand men. Gustavus learned of Tilly's 
movements at Wurzburg. He understood that he was aim- 
ing on either Wurzburg, Schweinfurt, or Bamberg; but 
though he cared little for him so long as Niirnberg could 
take care of herself, he was careful to protect his allied cities 
and to close all available defiles. 

When Tilly marched away from the Weser and towards 
Franconia, Landgrave William and Duke Bernard put in 
some good work. The latter gave a hearty blow to Fugger; 
and the landgrave fell on Vacha, took a big convoy intended 
for Tilly at Corbach, and captured Miinden and Hoxter. 
These outside operations cannot be detailed. 



XXII. 

MAINZ. NOVEMBER, 1631. 

Leaving Tilly, Pappenheim returned to the Weser ; Tilly was ordered by 
Maximilian to protect Bavaria, and sat down at Windsheim. Gustavus moved 
down river to secure his hold on the Main and the Rhine before turning toward 
the Danube. Taking all the cities on the way, he reached Frankfort November 
16. He had thirty-two thousand men. Mainz, which had a Spanish garrison, 
resisted ; and Gustavus marched up the Rhine, crossed, and attacked the city 
from the left bank. While so engaged, he heard that Tilly was besieging 
Niirnberg, and at once started with a column of twenty-six thousand men 
towards his ally ; but at Frankfort he learned that Tilly had failed before the 
place, which had resisted all his threats. Returning to Mainz, Gustavus took 
the place. December 22, and quartered his army there. During this period 
Pappenheim was operating against Gustavus' lieutenants on the Weser, showing 
ability, but accomplishing no substantial result. On retiring from Nurnberg, 
Tilly took up quarters in the Nordlingen country. The official list of Gusta- 
vus' troops and allies at this time shows eighty thousand men under the colors, 
with an equal number to be raised during the winter, — a marked contrast to 
the thirteen thousand men who landed near Stralsund a year and a half before. 

With Fugger and Aldringer Tilly Lad marched from 
Miltenburg and taken Rothemburg and Windsheim, had 
devastated Franconia where he crossed it, and reached 
Anspach November 20. Gustavus had not succeeded in 
cutting him off from Bavaria. He had separated from Pap- 
penheim, who, unable to agree with his chief, preferred to 
march back to Westphalia, a territory some one must defend 
for the emperor. It is asserted that Tilly intended to bring 
♦ on another general engagement at jan early date. This is 
perhaps doubtful; for though Tilly never lacked courage, he 
lacked enterprise of a certain stamp, and had scarcely yet 



TILLY ENERGETIC. 289 

forgotten Breitenfeld. When he reached the Tauber, he 
had recovered his base and could choose a safe defensive, or 
a march to the Main to seek his adversary. He did not do 
the latter; for, whatever his intentions, his master, Maxi- 
milian, nervously fearing for his borders, ordered him to 
stop at covering Bavaria, and not to undertake operations 
which might lead to battle. Tilly took up positions with 
twelve thousand men at Donauwbrth and Guntzenhausen, 
sent an equal number to the Upper Palatinate, and began to 
recruit. From annoyance at his orders, he was tempted to 
lay down the command, but was dissuaded by his immediate 
officers and Maximilian's personal request. He sent a 
detachment to seize on Wertheim, but without success, for 
the king, who was watching his operations, laid an ambus- 
cade for the detachment and severely handled it ; and imme- 
diately after made a descent on four imperial regiments at 
Creglingen, and all but destroyed them. Shortly receiving 
fourteen thousand men of reinforcement from Alsatia, the 
Lower Palatinate and Wiirtemberg, and emboldened by 
his numbers, Tilly advanced columns to Eothemburg, Winds- 
heim and Ochsenfurt, and took up a position at Windsheim, 
the king being for the moment sick in Wiirzburg. 

Considering the total defeat of Tilly not many weeks 
back, he had shown commendable energy in coming to the 
protection of his master's territory, and in making even par- 
tial attacks on the new allies of Sweden. But the timidity 
of the elector had prevented the veteran from utilizing his 
numerical, if not actual, superiority at the points attacked; 
and it had enabled the Swedes, without opposition, to plant 
themselves firmly on the Main. That Tilly could have pre- 
vented the seizure of the Main is improbable, but he might 
have made it difficult. 

Holding Thuringia and Franconia, the king did not for the 



290 DOWN THE MAIN. 

moment care to move on Tilly; the possession of the Main 
down to the Rhine seemed more important; and Tilly, by 
moving to the upper Main, had yielded up all power to 
defend the lower. Leaving Horn with five thousand foot 
and two thousand horse to hold the Wiirzburg bishopric, 
and to complete the subjection of Franconia, the king 
started down the Main November 9, with eighteen thousand 
men, intending to gain control of or neutralize the bishoprics 
of Mainz, Trier and Cologne, the other Catholic Rhine 
princes and the Spanish troops, to relieve the Palatinate, and 
to take advantage of the richness of the country to add to 
his material strength before moving against southern Ger- 
many, Bavaria and Austria. His general scheme, as we 
have seen, was built on procuring large accessions of troops. 

Whatever historians may say of Gustavus' declination to 
march on Vienna after the victory of Breitenfeld, they can- 
not complain that he was not thorough in what he undertook 
to do in lieu thereof ; and the event proves his own plan the 
wiser. While one cannot prove that a march on Vienna 
would not have brought Ferdinand to his knees, it remains 
certain that, had Gustavus undertaken this course, the world 
would have remained the poorer by many lessons in method- 
ical war. 

The task he was now undertaking was not difficult, for the 
Catholic princes were unable to offer much opposition, and 
the garrisons along the Main were weak. Before leaving 
Wiirzburg, he sent out Colonel Hubald, with twenty-two 
hundred dragoons and cuirassiers, to capture Hanau, which 
this officer did by storm on November 10; Gelnhausen, 
Friedburg and Hochst surrendered, and on November 17 
Rothenfels did the like. As the enemy was at Rothemburg, 
the king personally headed a detachment and fully garrisoned 
Schweinfurt; and a strong body was left in Wiirzburg. 



A WORDY DEFIANCE. 291 

The bulk of the Royal Army marched down on the left bank 
of the Main, a smaller body on the right bank. The bag- 
gage, artillery and supplies were floated down on boats 
between the troops. A large number of the towns were 
found ready to join the Swedish cause, Wertheim on the 
20th, Miltenburg on the 21st, Aschaffenburg on the 22d, 
Steinheim on the 25th, and Offenbach on the 26th. Frank- 
fort, after some delay, concluded to swell this number on the 
28th. The garrisons, as a rule, entered the Swedish service. 

At Frankfort a mild treaty was made with Hesse Darm- 
stadt, which until now had held aloof; that principality 
reserved all its powers, but gave up, until the war should 
be ended, the fortress of Riisselsheim, which, standing between 
Mainz and Frankfort, was of marked importance. 

On November 28, through Frankfort, Gustavus marched 
to Hochst, Konigstein, Florsheim and Kostheim; and at 
Hochst there joined him fourteen thousand men from Hesse- 
Cassel, under Landgrave William, which, as Tilly had 
moved away from the Weser, were no longer needed there. 
This gave Gustavus thirty-two thousand men, with which 
he sat down on the right bank of the Rhine, astride the 
Main, the bulk of the force threatening Mainz. 

This great city possessed a powerful bridge-head in the 
fortified town of Kastel on the right bank of the Rhine; two 
thousand Spanish troops under Count Silva which formed 
the garrison of Mainz vowed they would die to the last man 
sooner than give up the place; and on being asked by the 
elector if he had enough troops, Silva replied that he had 
enough to whip three kings of Sweden. The citizens made 
some advances, but Gustavus recalled to their mind their 
hitherto stubborn refusals to treat, and declined any but sur- 
render without terms. The elector prepared for defense ; he 
drove piles in the Main at its mouth, sank ships, and clogged 



292 



MAINZ ISOLATED. 



up the river with stones; having done which he lost heart, 
left Silva to protect his capital, and fled with the bishop of 
Worms to Cologne. The garrison ill-treated the citizens 
and prepared for a stout resistance. 

The king did not deem it possible to take Mainz from the 
right bank, and it was difficult to cross the river below 
the city in order to besiege it, though Bernard had taken the 
Mouse Tower and Ehrenfels near Bingen. There was a 



%*1. ^ M %Rrt«. 4 *°,I^ , y ,% H0< 

\fc "i a* VVVY^l-V' a' vN 




bridge of boats at Hochst ; numerous boats fitted with guns 
and breastworks lay in the river, and Gustavus began to 
isolate Mainz. He seized the custom-house buildings oppo- 
site Bingen, and Walluf , and levied on the country contri- 
butions of forty-five thousand rix dollars a month. He sent 
out detachments to the Lahn, and took Limburg and other 
places, with much booty. Having meanwhile reduced the 
right bank as far up as the Neckar, he was preparing to 



GUSTAVUS' CONTEMPT OF DEATH. 293 

cross above, when news reached him that Tilly was besieging 
Niirnberg. 

This was a surprise. Gustavus postponed his designs 
against Mainz, left things as they were, and started De- 
cember 9, determined to relieve Niirnberg by a battle. 
He had with him seventeen thousand foot and nine thousand 
horse of the Swedish, Hesse-Cassel and Weimar troops. 
While his columns were defiling through Frankfort, he 
made a definitive treaty with that city ; and learning at the 
same time that Tilly had given up the siege of Niirnberg 
and retired to the Danube, he again returned to the Khine. 

This raid persuaded the king that Tilly might push in on 
his communications, and he made dispositions accordingly. 
Horn's corps was strengthened by drafts on Teuffel and on 
Niirnberg, with headquarters at Windsheim, so as to sustain 
at need either the king or Saxony; Duke William was 
ordered to push his army from Thuringia forward towards 
Schweinfurt, lest Horn should be suddenly detached. Thus 
Horn and the Weimar armies were made a link between, 
or a reserve to the king or the elector of Saxony. 

While strictly maintaining his kingly dignity, Gustavus 
was easily approached by all. One day, in Frankfort, a 
priest was discovered in the anteroom with a concealed dag- 
ger; it was currently reported that a band of Jesuits had 
bound themselves with an oath to take his life; and bets 
were laid in Augsburg that Gustavus would not live six 
months. Much of this may have been idle talk, but when 
Gustavus was urged to keep a body-guard about him, he is 
said to have replied : ' ' Then you would have me disregard 
the protection of God?" His very contempt of death was 
in some respects a safeguard. About this time are recorded 
some utterances of the king concerning his mission in Ger- 
many and his duty to Protestantism. One day at table with 



294 OUTFLANKING MAINZ. 

the king of Bohemia, the landgrave of Darmstadt and many 
other princes, the king said: "Believe me, I love a comfort- 
able life as well as any man, and I have no desire to die an 
early death. The emperor would readily make a separate 
peace with me to get me to return to Sweden. But I dare 
not leave so many innocent people subject to his revenge. 
Were it not for this, I would soon get me gone." 

On his return Gustavus went seriously at the Mainz prob- 
lem. He left the landgrave to blockade the city from the 
right bank, — the Rhinegau, — and to occupy the country up 
and down on either side the Main ; he himself passed over 
to the south side, and on December 10 made a demonstration 
towards Heidelberg. On December 13, from Gernsheim, 
he turned quickly down river to a point opposite Oppenheim 
where was a redoubt held by Spanish troops. These refused 
to surrender; but having undertaken a piece of work, Gus- 
tavus was not easily arrested. Despite the opposition of the 
Spanish cavalry on both banks, on the night of December 
16-17 he put three hundred men in boats across the Rhine, 
built a bridge near Gernsheim, probably at one of the bends 
where his guns could protect the operation, crossed in the 
succeeding two days, December 17 and 18, with all his 
troops, took Oppenheim, stormed the castle, advanced 
towards and blockaded Mainz, and cut the city off from the 
Rhine up and down, as well as from the Main. The isolated 
redoubt on the right bank surrendered. In a reconnoissance 
here, the king by his reckless pushing out to the front, not 
properly accompanied, was again all but captured. His 
disregard of danger was a growing evil. No wonder he 
eventually fell a victim to it. 

On December 22, after two days' siege, Count Silva, 
despite his heroic protests to do or die, surrendered Mainz, 
and the troops were allowed the honors of war. Most of 



MAINZ OCCUPIED. 295 

them entered the king's service. It was a question whether 
this capture of Mainz was not an act of war against Spain, 
which Gustavus would have preferred to avoid, as his quarrel 
was one against the Austrian Hapsburgs. But Silva had 
received orders to be helpful to Mainz against Sweden, and 
Spain was already in the Baltic at Wismar. No war had 
been declared or was considered to exist, and yet acts of 
war had been committed by both parties. Gustavus was 
ready for what must come, and the ministry and estates sus- 
tained him. A contribution of eighty thousand rix dollars 
was levied on Mainz; one of forty-one thousand rix dollars 
on the Jesuits, and another of forty thousand on the Cath- 
olic priests. These were hard terms, for the Spaniards had 
already plundered the town ; but the money was paid. 

The king quartered his foot in Mainz, the horse in the 
surrounding country. He put the city in a state of excellent 
defense, surrounded it with works, built a strong redoubt on 
the Jacobsberg, replaced the bridge of boats across the 
Rhine to Kastel and made a new one to Kostheim, fortified 
the confluence of the Main and Rhine by a strong fortress, 
" Gustavburg, " on the left Main bank, gave the left bank 
of the Rhine in charge of Duke Bernard, established his 
winter-quarters and his court in the city, and moved for the 
moment to Frankfort, where he was made happy by the 
queen joining him. The elector of Mainz soon after broke 
off his connection with the emperor. About this time, also, 
the duke of Lorraine withdrew his forces, much weakened 
by sickness and desertion, from Tilly's army, and hurried 
home to defend his territory, threatened by France on one 
side and the Swedes on the other. His army was soon dis- 
banded by active contact with the French, who took Trier, 
Coblentz and Hermannstein (now Ehrenbreitstein), and he 
too forswore his fealty to the emperor. 



296 PAPPENHEIM ON THE WESER. 

The Spanish troops were lying on the Moselle, and from 
Mainz Gustavus organized an army to operate against them. 
Ehinegrave Otto Ludwig, in command of its vanguard, 
defeated at Creuznach a body of Spaniards with a loss of 
seven hundred killed, and later captured a number of places 
near by. It is asserted that Gustavus contemplated a march 
to the Netherlands to give the Spaniards the coup de grace; 
but Tilly was too threatening a factor, and the Dutch prom- 
ised to keep the Spanish army busy. Whatever his project, 
he did not in fact move far from the Mainz country; nor 
did it prove essential, for in the course of January and Feb- 
ruary, 1632, under the instances of Duke Bernard, all the 
Catholic princes of the Rhine, as far as the Netherlands, 
pledged themselves to neutrality; Worms, Speyer and Mann- 
heim did the like; the Spanish troops were forced to with- 
draw to the Netherlands, and the Protestant allies securely 
occupied both banks of the middle Rhine, Alsatia, the 
Lower Palatinate, Cologne, and other principalities. 

When Tilly marched from the Weser to Swabia, he left 
in the region between the Elbe, the sea and the Weser 
but a small body of troops to sustain the Catholic garrisons. 
The most important imperial towns were Magdeburg, Ros- 
tock, Wismar, and Domitz. Pappenheim, who, it will be 
remembered, had parted with Tilly in the Anspach region, 
and returned to Westphalia, had collected some eight thou- 
sand men, and, in November, 1631, raised the siege of 
Madgeburg, which an equal force of Swedes under Baner 
had just brought to the point of surrender. Baner retired 
into his strong position at Calbe, and Pappenheim shortly 
evacuated Magdeburg, burned the Elbe bridge and moved 
against Liineburg. He soon found himself surrounded by 
the superior forces of Tott, Hamilton, Baner, and the bishop 
of Bremen, and a considerable accession of men raised for 



TILLY'S MOVEMENTS. 297 

Baner in Thuringia; he was compelled to retire behind the 
Weser, into the lower Rhenish Provinces, against which the 
duke of Hesse-Cassel continued to operate from the south, 
in such a manner as distinctly to aid Liineburg, the lower 
Saxon Circle and Bremen by his diversions. Then Magde- 
burg, Domitz, Rostock, Wismar and other towns were suc- 
cessively captured by Tott and the Protestant allies. 

All this was not, however, accomplished without some diffi- 
culty; for Pappenheim operated with boldness and skill, 
prevented the allies from joining forces, compelled Tott to 
give up the siege of Stade, and when, in consequence of 
Bauer and Duke William joining in his front, he was con- 
strained to retire to Westphalia, he sat down near Cassel 
and held himself until he was ordered to join Wallenstein in 
Saxony. After he left, Baudissin and Liineburg had freer 
play; the lower Elbe and the Weser region were quite 
cleared of the emperor's troops, and Baner, after taking- 
Magdeburg, was able to move with a considerable part of 
his force by way of Thuringia and Franconia to join Gus- 
tavus, as Duke William, after taking Gottingen and Duder- 
stadt, also did. But this is anticipating events; and there 
is no space to devote to the details of these minor operations. 
Their object and result were to conserve the bastion which 
the king had erected with so much time and skill. 

When Gustavus marched down the Main, Tilly, though 
much superior in force, still undertook no operations against 
Horn, whom the king had left with eight to ten thousand 
men to hold the upper river, — a fact largely due to the con- 
trary orders and pusillanimity of the elector of Bavaria. He 
contented himself with devastating the region between Wind- 
sheim and Anspach; and on November 28 he marched from 
Anspach, via Schwabach, on Niirnberg, demanded money 
and rations, and threatened to lay siege to the place. The 



298 NURNBERG DEFIES TILLY. 

citizens manned the walls, and even sent out the newly levied 
troops to skirmish with the enemy. Tilly threatened the 
city with the fate of Magdeburg, unless it complied with his 
demands ; but the threat was idle and the siege short-lived. 
Tilly's army suffered from a want of provisions; the elector 
feared that he would get cut off from Bavaria, and ordered 
him back; a portion of his forces was already detached to 
Bohemia; a Protestant officer in the emperor's service proved 
traitor, and brought about an explosion in the ammunition 
depot of Tilly's artillery park; everything seemed to conspire 
against him, and, on December 4, he withdrew to Nordlingen, 
and quartered his troops on the left bank of the Danube, 
from the borders of Bohemia to the upper Neckar and Wiir- 
temberg. It was to meet this threat of Tilly's on Niirnberg 
that Gustavus had so suddenly left Mainz. 

Instead of making his winter-quarters in Erfurt, Gustavus 
had advanced to the Rhine and Main, had conquered a large 
territory, and could choose his winter-quarters where he 
would. A year before, he had wintered at Barwalde in the 
midst of privation and danger, with disappointment and 
uncertainty staring him in the face; now, he could winter in 
the golden city of the Rhine, in the enjoyment of plenty, 
and with the approbation of all Germany. Booty was 
immense; the arsenals of "Wurzburg supplied quantities of 
munition and clothing; victual was abundant; and the poor 
Swedish peasant reveled in Franconian wheat and wine. 
He had never dreamed of such luxury; he ate and drank to 
his heart's content. A Capua was more to be feared than 
a Valley Forge. 

There is in the Swedish archives an official list, giving 
the troops at this time under Gustavus' command, and indi- 
cating what was needed to bring the companies and regi- 
ments up to full strength. 



GUSTAVUS' FORCES. 299 

In the Army of the Rhine, under the king's command, there were 
with the colors 113 companies of foot, viz. : the Royal regiment of 12 
companies ; Hogendorf, 12 ; Winkel, 12 ; Bane*r, 8 ; Wallenstein, 8 ; 
Vitzthum, 8 ; Hepburn, 12 ; Lunsdel, 8 ; Munroe, 8 ; Ruthven, 8 ; Ram- 
say, 8 ; Hamilton, 8. Total, 10,521 men, plus 3,000 of Hamilton's re- 
cruits. To bring these up to normal strength of 150 men per com- 
pany, there were to be raised 6,521 men. And a further increase of 
18,000 men was contemplated, viz. : 40 companies of 3,000 men of Ham- 
ilton's recruits ; 80 companies of 150 men each, to be recruited by von 
Solms, Isemburg and Nassau, and by Hubald and Hornig. The cav- 
alry had in line 83 companies, viz. : Smalanders, 8 companies ; West 
Goths, 8 ; Finns, 8 ; Duke Bernard, 8 ; the rhinegrave, 12 ; Tott, 12 ; 
Ussier, 10 ; Callenbach, 8 ; Livoniaus, 5 ; Courlanders, 4. Total, 5,300 
men, to be recruited up to normal of 9,175 men. To these were to be 
added 20 companies, with 2,500 men ; to be raised by von Solms, John 
of Hesse, and Taupadel. The present total was 18,821 men. The grand 
total would thus be 46,717 men. 

In the Franconian Army, under Horn, were 63 companies of foot, viz.: 
Axel Lillie, 8 companies ; Oxenstiern, 8 ; Erich Hand, 8 ; Hard, 8 ; von 
Thurn, 8 ; von Reike, 12 ; Wallenstein, 8 ; Dragoons, 3. Total, 5,161 
men, to be increased by 12,844 men, by recruits from von Solms, Mar- 
grave Hans George, Truchsetz, Mussfeld, Canoski and Hastfehr. The 
cavalry had 36 companies, viz. : Baudissin, 12 ; Kochtitzki, 8 ; Witzle- 
ben, 8 ; Sperreuter, 4 ; East Goths, 4 ; and 600 recruits under Hastfehr. 
Total, 3,119 men, to be increased by 8,531 men, by recruits from Duke 
Ernest, von Solms, the margrave of Brandenburg, the duke of Wei- 
mar, von Dundorp, von Hoffenhidt and Truchsetz. The present for 
duty were 8,280 men. The grand total was to be 29,655 men. 

The landgrave of Hesse had 6 regiments of foot, with 6,000 men, to 
be raised to 7,200 ; 32 companies of cavalry, with 2,000 men, to be raised 
to 4,000. He proposed to raise 6 new regiments of 7,200 men. Present 
total, 8,000 men. Proposed total, 18,400 men. 

The Mecklenburg corps had 56 companies of 3,900 men, to be raised 
to 11,100 men. 

The Lower Saxon Army, under Tott, had 136 companies of 12,000 
foot ; 8 companies of 1,000 horse. To be raised, 7,850 men. Present 
total, 13,000 men. Proposed total, 20,850 men. 

The Magdeburg Army, under Bane"r, had 194 companies, with 
10,437 men, to be raised to 30,821 men ; 69 companies cavalry, with 



300 



AN ENORMOUS ARMY. 



1,800 men, to be raised to 8,375 men. Total present, 12,237 men. Pro- 
posed total, 39,196 men. 

The Weimar Corps, under Duke William, had 5 regiments of 3,000 
men, to be raised to 6,000 ; and 20 companies of 1,000 horse, to be raised 
to 2,500. Present total, 4,000 ; proposed total, 8,500. 

Garrison troops were 10,416 men, to be increased to 13,150. In 
Erfurt were 2,545 men, to be increased to 4,825. 

In addition to these new German troops, Gustavus expected in the 
spring of 1632 from Sweden, 48 companies of foot, of 7,200 men, and 
12 companies of cavalry, of 1,500 men. 

The grand total, then, which Gustavus had under the col- 
ors at the end of 1631 was 63,700 foot and 16,000 cavalry; 
and this he had good reason to hope, for the campaign of 
1632, to increase up to 153,000 foot and 43,500 horse. 
Such an army had never yet been seen in Germany. 




Landsknecht. (16th Century.) 



XXIII. 

TO THE DANUBE. DECEMBER, 1631, TO APRIL, 1632. 

At Mainz Gustavus held his winter's court, — the most prominent monarch 
in Europe. At this time he could have claimed the crown of Germany ; that 
he did not shows the purity of his ambition. Everything looked smiling ; and 
yet everything hinged on the king's life. All Europe was agog at his wonder- 
ful accomplishments, but the graybeards shook their heads, and wondered 
whether Germany was to be made subservient to Sweden. Still, on the surface, 
all went well ; the Protestants were in the ascendant both in a political and 
military sense, while the emperor was crowded to the wall. In 1632, however, 
the theatre was too extended. There were too many places to hold, too many 
new regions to reduce ; the king rarely had under his personal command as 
large an army as he should. At Mainz he had over one hundred thousand men, 
but these were in eight several parcels, all apparently essential : Mainz, Wiirz- 
burg, Hesse, Saxony, Magdeburg, Mecklenburg, lower Saxony and garrisons. 
During the late winter Horn and Tilly did some manoeuvring on the upper 
Main. Gustavus came to Horn's assistance, and Tilly moved back to the Dan- 
ube. The king followed, crossed the Danube at Donauworth, and Tilly 
intrenched himself behind the Lech at Rain, to protect Bavaria. 

It was a splendid court rather than the rude winter-quar- 
ters of a campaigning army which was seen at Mainz in the 
winter of 1631-32; and ambassadors from every European 
power paid their respects to the victorious monarch. Nego- 
tiations consumed the days and weeks. Treaties were made 
with the duke of Brunswick and the city; a new one with 
Mecklenburg and formal ones with Liibeck, Luneburg and 
Bremen. Negotiations were pursued with Wlirtemberg, 
Ulm and Strasburg. Gustavus was the centre-point, the 
observed of all observers, the most powerful of the kings of 
the earth, the most brilliant individual of the times. And 



302 EUROPE AT ODDS AND EVENS. 

yet the Swedish standing was uncertain; everything hinged 
on Gustavus and his purposes; and what he could accom- 
plish hinged on his own life, for there was no one to succeed 
him in his peculiar work. Gustavus recognized this fact 
without arrogance. He might have claimed, and without 
contest have been allowed, the crown of a new kingdom of 
Germany ; all he asked was a German Protestant Confeder- 
ation — a Corpus HJvangelicorum — under himself as chief. 
This desire might have taken formal shape, had the electors 
of Brandenburg and Saxony been like the other allies; but 
they remained intractable, the one from hebetude, the other 
from envy. 

The whole of Europe was still at odds and evens. The 
dictates of religion were buried under the selfish personal or 
political motives which governed every monarch. England 
was shifty; Charles I. promised nothing, and his promises^ 
if made, would be worthless. He was, in fact, plotting with 
the emperor, and would do anything to secure the restora- 
tion of Frederick to the Palatinate. Maximilian was for 
a while in league with Richelieu, who was eager to secure 
neutrality for the Catholic League while humiliating the 
House of Hapsburg. He sought to compass some agreement 
between the League and Gustavus; but this was difficult; 
and finally, when he accepted Gustavus' conditions to allow 
the League a neutrality which should reduce its army to 
twelve thousand men and tie it hand and foot, Maximilian 
in anger threw over Richelieu, and thereafter clave to the 
emperor. Denmark was jealous of Swedish successes; but 
her recent punishment forbade her to act. The Netherlands 
followed their loadstone, gold. Spain was or was not at 
war with Gustavus, as either saw fit to construe the situa- 
tion. Poland was bitter as gall, but impotent. Russia was 
friendly. Brandenburg was inert. Ferdinand kept on his 



A GREAT TRANSFORMATION. 303 

way with his usual directness. Richelieu and Gustavus 
were equally anti-Hapsburg, but from different standpoints. 
And finally John George of Saxony, ruled by Arnim, leaned 
first to Gustavus, then to Ferdinand. His great foible was 
jealousy of the king; his worst defect was an ancient and 
unreasoning sense of fealty to the empire; his main aim was 
a Third Party in Germany, which, under his lead, should 
dominate both the emperor and the king; and he alternately 
corresponded with Gustavus and with Wallenstein. Faith- 
ful to neither because faithless to himself, he was destined 
to be the means of wrecking his own cause, and of visiting 
the horrors of war on his own dominions. And yet John 
George believed that he was honesty personified, and in a 
certain sense he was so; but he had dropped so far behind 
the times that he could neither gauge the German situation, 
nor appreciate what kind of honesty the times demanded. 

Our attention is constantly drawn to the transformation 
which had taken place since the king had come upon the 
scene. The situation forces itself upon us. When Gustavus 
landed with his thirteen thousand men, the Protestant cause 
was on the wane, the party utterly discouraged, and the 
emperor everywhere successful. Now Gustavus had nearly 
one hundred and fifty thousand men in garrison and in the 
field. Recruiting was active. All the Protestant princes 
were in league with the Swedes. France was sustaining the 
cause by means which neutralized the Catholic princes on 
the Rhine, and the rest were dominated by the conditions 
surrounding them. The Swedes were on the borders of 
Bavaria, cutting the emperor from the Rhine bishoprics, — 
Cologne and Trier, — and were about to invade his domin- 
ions, while his "buffer-state," Bavaria, was made unreliable 
by the abject fear of the elector for his possessions. Ferdi- 
nand had sent to Poland for troops, but these were refused 



304 ALL DUE TO GUSTAVUS. 

on the plea of a threat from Russia, — perhaps fostered by 
Gustavus. Pope Urban refused Ferdinand countenance, 
alleging the war to be not for Catholicism, but for Hapsburg 
aggrandizement. From Spain he could hope nothing, for she 
was busy in the Netherlands. Upper Austria was in readi- 
ness for revolt. Turkey was threatening to invade Lower 
Austria. Switzerland favored the Protestants. And still 
worse, the emperor had but eighty thousand men, of which 
sixty thousand, ill-cared for and in bad heart, lay on the 
left bank of the Danube, from Swabia to Moravia, striving 
to protect the inheritance of the emperor from further 
inroads, and the rest in garrisons or detachments in Silesia, 
lower Saxony, Westphalia, on the Elbe, Weser and Rhine, 
where they scarcely held their own. He was recruiting in 
all directions, but to small effect. And more than all, the 
moral superiority had gone over to the side of the Protes- 
tants. This astonishing change was entirely due to Gustavus' 
methodical handiwork. 

There had been a suggestion, hard to be traced to its 
source, that peace could be had on terms, indefinitely 
stated, but these were not such that Ferdinand could accept 
them. It was sheer inability to help himself that induced 
him again to turn to Wallenstein, the idea of employing 
whom Gustavus had given up for fear that he could not be 
trusted. 

The casual observer might be led to say that all these 
results sprang directly from the victory of Breitenfeld; that 
had Gustavus beaten the enemy in a great battle at an ear- 
lier day, his standing would have been as good and much 
time saved. But a careful survey of the king's problem, 
and of the results as he worked them out, will convince the 
student that the solid gain Gustavus had made came more 
from his careful method than from his splendid victory. A 



WHY GUSTAVUS WAS GREAT. 305 

Breitenfeld in 1630 would not have taught him the true 
inwardness of the German situation. He would have leaned 
more heavily on German support; he would have taken too 
favorable a view of the helpfulness of his allies, and he 
might have undertaken operations which would have resulted 
in his overthrow. Had he pushed for an early victory, won 
it, and utilized it for an advance into Germany without his 
carefully established base, not only would he not have been 
the great exponent of methodical war, but he would scarcely 
have redeemed the Protestant cause. Gustavus belongs to 
the six Great Captains because of his careful method and 
his boldness combined; if either quality won him more than 
the other, it was his scrupulous care in doing well whatever 
he undertook to do. 

But brilliant as Gustavus' standing was, splendid as had 
been his achievements, the conditions existing in the German 
political structure promised no certainty of continuing wel- 
fare; and these conditions reacted on the military problem 
vastly more than they would in a war of conquest. In 1632 
there was altogether too extended a theatre of operations; 
such, in fact, as to forbid one leadership. Gustavus' opera- 
tions in Franconia and Bavaria had small influence on those 
of his lieutenants; but the outside operations were of no 
great moment, except in so far as they weakened the Royal 
Army. What interest there is centres in the work of the 
king and of his great opponent, Wallenstein. 

There is nowhere a crisp statement of Gustavus' plan for 
the campaign of 1632 ; nor anything to show that he formu- 
lated a definite one, beyond the general scheme of moving 
down the Danube and occupying the lands on its either bank. 
In no other war was the influence of petty states on the gen- 
eral military scheme so prominent; no other great captain 
waging an offensive war was ever compelled to weigh so 



306 NUMEROUS SOVEREIGNTIES. 

many and inconsiderable questions. Had Gustavus come as 
a conqueror, — the role of all other great captains, save 
Frederick, — he might have brushed aside these smaller 
requirements, and have dealt solely with the larger factors ; 
but he came as a liberator, to restore and not take away, 
to build up and not tear down; and every one of the petty 
principalities had to be considered as a sovereign nation. 
The contrast between his patience with the German princes 
and Napoleon's brusque method of dealing with them is 
marked. It is all the more astonishing that, in the short 
twenty-eight months Gustavus enacted his part on the 
European stage, he accomplished so vast a result. 

From a military point of view, his forces were in detach- 
ments altogether too small. While Gustavus was at Mainz, 
his active roll of over one hundred thousand men was in eight 
armies : eighteen thousand under his own command ; twenty 
thousand under Horn on the Main ; thirteen thousand under 
Baner in Magdeburg; Tott moving from Mecklenburg to 
lower Saxony had thirteen thousand ; the Saxons had twenty 
thousand; William of Hesse, eight thousand; the duke of 
Mecklenburg, four thousand ; and in various garrisons fifteen 
to twenty thousand more. Every one of these armies was 
essential where it stood ; and yet it seemed as if none of them 
could stand alone, and the year 1632 shows us Gustavus 
striding from place to place to help first this detachment and 
then that, arresting a necessary manoeuvre here to save an 
irretrievable loss yonder; a condition due to the lamentable 
division of Germany into petty sovereignties. Still, despite 
his difficulties, the king accomplished a year's work perhaps 
unequaled in all military history; and, as no other great 
captain was happy enough to do, he sealed the deed of 
conserved Protestantism which, unrequited, he gave to his 
German brethren, with his life's blood. 



TILLY MOVES ON HORN. 307 

When, towards the close of 1631, Tilly had withdrawn 
from before Niirnberg, Horn gathered what forces he could 
readily spare from other work and marched from Rothemburg 
along the Tauber to Mergentheim, and thence to the Neckar, 
took Heilbronn and Wimpfen, and drove Tilly's troops in 
that region back to the Danube. Having cleaned Swabia of 
Catholic troops, he was ordered by Gustavus to Windsheim, 
to recruit, for part of his army had been detached to Mag- 
deburg, where Pappenheim was confronting Baner. Horn's 
quota was fourteen thousand men ; but he did not reach it, 
being hindered by a two weeks' truce between Gustavus and 
the League pending certain negotiations. At its expiration 
Horn turned towards Franconia, where he threw back a 
force of a thousand foot and horse coming from Forscheim, 
and after occupying Hochstadt by surrender, captured Bam- 
berg and sat down there. 

This was an open town without defenses. At the end of 
February Tilly advanced against it from his winter-quarters 
in Nordlingen. Horn made preparations to hold out, as he 
expected reinforcements from lower Saxony, and built long- 
lines of works around the town. But his new troops were 
not yet in hand. Tilly had at least twenty thousand men, 
thrice his force, and coming from Nordlingen, had assembled 
at Neumarkt and thence advanced. Horn had not got Bam- 
berg in order for defense, when the enemy's van 1 put in its 
appearance. One of his cavalry regiments was, against 
orders, drawn into action, was beaten, and in falling back, 
demoralized a newly recruited infantry battalion. The panic 
spread, the troops abandoned the works and fled over the 
bridge on the Regnitz into the town, with the enemy at 
their heels. Horn headed a regiment of foot and one of 
horse, drove the enemy back over the river, and held him 
until the bridge could be broken down; and he saved his 



308 A NEW PLAN. 

artillery and baggage. But he deemed it prudent to retire 
to Eltman, down the Main, and then collecting his army at 
Hassfurt (where in a cavalry combat he won a handsome 
success), he marched to Schweinfurt, and later took up a 
position at Wiirzburg. Gustavus blamed Horn for this 
affair, which he said unduly encouraged the enemy. Tilly 
retook Bamberg, and went on to Hassfurt to attack Horn, 
but the Swede had already retired with all his impedimenta, 
and had marched on to join Gustavus at Geldersheim. Tilly 
ceased his pursuit to besiege Schweinfurt, where, after 
intrenching the town, Horn had left a garrison of three regi- 
ments. 

Early in 1632 Gustavus seems to have made a plan to 
base on Mainz, march up the Rhine into the Palatinate, 
take Heidelberg, move thence into Wiirtemberg, and follow 
down the Danube from its headwaters into Bavaria. His 
lieutenants had captured Braunfels on the Lahn, Boben- 
hausen, Kirchberg and Bacharach, and had just taken 
Creuznach by storm, all of which tended to keep the Span- 
iards from too great activity in Alsatia, and he was about 
ready to start, when he heard of Tilly's advance on Horn. 
He at once changed his plan to a march up the Main, to join 
Horn, hoping between them to drive Tilly beyond the Dan- 
ube and to follow him into Bavaria. 

Duke Bernard was left under Oxenstiern in Alsatia, to 
hold head against the Spaniards. But the two did not 
agree; and Gustavus soon called Bernard to his own side. 
He committed to the landgrave the duty of keeping watch 
of the elector of Cologne and other Rhenish princes; he left 
Tott to act against Pappenheim on the Weser with the 
troops of the lower Saxon Circle, and Baner on the Elbe; 
and now, secure in every step he had so far taken, he started 
from Hochst, March 15, with twenty thousand men, through 



TILLY RETIRES. 309 

Frankfort and Steinheim to Aschaffenburg, and across to 
Lohr, where he rested March 18. He had written to Niirn- 
berg and Schweinfurt not to lose heart at the fall of Bam- 
berg, but to persevere in the good cause. He joined Horn 
near Schweinfurt, and concentrated the bulk of his troops 
at Kitzingen, March 21-24. His avowed purpose was to 
bring Tilly's army to battle, for Wallenstein was again 
afoot, and the king would like to disable Tilly before the 
imperial forces could concentrate. He was working to this 
end when he heard what turned out to be the false news that 
Tilly had marched towards the Upper Palatinate. 

On this the king resolved to leave three thousand men to 
act as an outpost to Franconia, and head for the Danube, 
instead of following Tilly away from the more essential work 
in Swabia. He ordered in Baner and William of Weimar, 
and with forty-five thousand men set out via Windsheim 
(March 26-28) and Fiirth (March 30) towards Niirnberg, on 
the way to the Danube. The fact that Tilly had not moved 
did not now affect his plan. 

Up to the 24th Tilly had lain in the Bamberg country, 
but on the king's approach he declined to again tempt his 
fortune in a battle, gathered all the forces under his com- 
mand, and withdrew up the Regnitz by way of Forscheim 
and Erlangen. The king's smart advance had prevented 
Tilly from detaching any forces against Oxenstiern on the 
Rhine. Both armies were apparently aiming for Niirnberg, 
but Tilly concluded to pass by the city, and marched through 
Neumarkt to Ingolstadt. Here he crossed the Danube, 
proceeded upstream, and sat down near the fortress of Rain, 
behind the Lech. 

Maximilian had conceived the notion that Gustavus would 
prefer battle with Tilly to an invasion of Bavaria, and had 
ordered his generalissimo to withdraw towards Bohemia or 



310 GUSTAVUS ENTERS NURNBERG. 

Austria, and manoeuvre to join Wallenstein's new imperial 
army- He hoped thus to draw Gustavus from Bavaria. 
But his war council strongly opposed leaving the entrance to 
Bavaria open; and Tilly was withdrawn to the Danube, and 
his army so placed as to prevent Gustavus' inroad. As the 
Swedish king would probably aim for Swabia, the Lech 
would be a strong line on which to defend the land. It was 
this lack of purpose in the elector which had given rise to 
the rumor Gustavus had heard, and it was the later deci- 
sion which had shaped Tilly's march. Under such contra- 
dictory orders, no wonder that Tilly was unequal to a situa- 
tion with which at his best he was scarcely abreast. 

At this time Gustavus would have been glad to enter into 
a bond of neutrality with Maximilian, and rather expected 
an embassy to treat of peace; but the elector was yet too 
sure of his ground to make advances. He placed great 
reliance on what Wallenstein would accomplish when once 
he took the field, and felt reasonably confident of the future. 

Gustavus, accompanied by Frederick of the Palatinate 
and other notables, entered Niirnberg in state, March 31, 
and was received by the population with enthusiasm. But 
he could not delay; his movements were decided by the 
retreat of the enemy. Having inspected the defenses, he 
turned to follow Tilly, moved via Schwabach and Monheim, 
and reached Donauwbrth April 5. Here he bombarded and 
captured the works on the Schellenberg in front of the town, 
forced the two thousand infantry there to a precipitate flight 
across the Danube with a loss of five hundred men, took 
Donauworth, restored its works, and rebuilt the bridge 
which the enemy had tried to destroy. Horn was sent along 
the left bank with a suitable force, to occupy Uhn, which 
had already agreed to an alliance, and take other fords and 
places on the way. This duty Horn accomplished in good 



WURTEMBERG JOINS. 



311 



style, collecting much provision and material. Hochstadt 
was garrisoned by two thousand foot and eight hundred 
horse ; Dillingen, Lauingen, Grundelfingen, Guntzburg were 
all friendly; Lichtenau, Pappenheim and Wiilzburg were 
taken by Sperreuter. The duke of Wiirtemberg declared 
against the emperor, and raised eight thousand men for the 
cause. 

Tilly made no pretense to oppose all this. He had, since 
Breitenfeld, lost much of his desire to cross swords with the 
Swedes, and his present orders were limited to the defense 
of Bavaria. 




Statue of Gustavus Adolphus in Stockholm. 



XXIV. 

THE CROSSING OF THE LECH. APRIL 15, 1632. 

Having crossed the Danube, Gustavus was on the left bank of the Leclu 
Tilly held an apparently inexpugnable position on the other side ; but a reeon- 
noissanee satisfied the king' that the position could be forced. Such a thing was 
unheard of ; but Gustavus did unheard-of things. Establishing a heavy bat- 
tery on the river bank, vinder cover of its fire and of the smoke of burning 
straw, he sent over a party to build a bridge-head, threw a pontoon bridge, and 
crossed his men. The imperialists met the crossing in force, but the king 
pushed on and drove them out of Rain. Tilly was mortally wounded. From 
Rain the king moved up the Lech to take Augsburg, and then marched on 
Ingolstadt. Maximilian retired to Ratisbon ; the king crossed the Danube and 
laid siege to Ingolstadt. Wallenstein, again in command of the imperial 
armies, was threatening Saxony ; Gustavus marched on Munich, to draw him 
from thence. In Swabia he seized the principal towns, and was fast reducing 
the country, when Wallenstein's inroad into Saxony constrained him to move 
north. Worse than the military threat was that, through Arnim, Wallenstein 
was tampering with the elector, and thus sapping Gustavus' communications. 

Crossing the Danube at Donauwbrth, the king found him- 
self on the left bank of the Lech, behind which, intrenched 
north of Rain, lay Tilly and the elector, who here came up 
to direct his generalissimo's operations. At a council of 
war, it had been decided that Tilly's army was too much 
lacking in morale to face Gustavus offensively, and that it 
should act strictly on the defensive until Wallenstein, who 
was again afoot, could come up, or at least send reinforce- 
ments. In their front was the Lech, and in their rear the 
small river Ach ; the right flank leaned on the Danube ; the 
left was protected by Rain. Redoubts had been built along 
the low-lying river front and joined by intrenchments ; and 



314 A BIT OF AUDACITY. 

heavy guns in suitable batteries stood at intervals. The 
fords of the Lech, up to Augsburg, and this city also, were 
held by Tilly ; the bridges had been destroyed and the towns 
occupied. 

If he so chose, the king might turn Tilly out of his posi- 
tion at Kain by crossing the Lech above him, or he might 
coop him up in a corner where he could not victual and thus 
force him out to fight; but this would take time, and after 
a careful reconnoissance, he assured himself of the actual 
weakness of the enemy's apparently impregnable position. 
Both banks were a low, marshy plain, which to-day has been 
drained by canaling the Lech; then the marsh lay between 
the Catholic position and the river. Higher land lay 
further away from the banks. The bulk of Tilly's army 
was in a woody defile back of the low ground, waiting 
for Wallenstein's arrival. Gustavus chose a third course. 
He had concentrated his forces at Nordheim, ready for any 
operation. He believed that the proper time had come for 
a bold stroke. From the fact that his whole campaign thus 
far had been cautious and systematic, neglecting no point 
from which trouble might arise, it will not do to assume that 
Gustavus lacked audacity. He was by nature overbold, and 
he now determined to impose on the enemy by crossing the 
river in their teeth, and attacking them in the intrenchments 
behind which they believed themselves invulnerable. The 
moral advantage to be gained by such a blow he esteemed 
would more than compensate for the loss, or danger of fail- 
ure. At the council of war preceding the attack, when 
Horn brought up all the questionable conditions of the case, 
— and they were many and grave, — Gustavus replied, in 
the words of Alexander at the Granicus : " What, have we 
crossed a sea and so many big rivers, to be stopped now by 
a mere brook? " The attack was decided on. 



PREPARATIONS TO CROSS. 



315 



•5" -'•>•,■,.,..•'- 



■vYl-V"''- 



On April 13, at early dawn, Gustavus made a reconnois- 
sance close to the enemy's works. Coming near an imperial 
outpost on the other side, the king shouted across to the 
sentry: "Good morning, mein Herr! Where is old Tilly?" 
"Thank you, Herr, Tilly is in quarters in Eain," replied 
the man, and then asked: "Comrade, where is the king?" 
"Oh, he 's in his quarters too! " replied Gustavus. "Why, 
you don't say the 
king gives you quar- 
ters?" "Oh, yes, 
indeed ; come over 
to us and you shall 
have fine quarters ! " 
laughed Gustavus 
as he rode away, 
merry over the ad- 
venture. 

Preparations had 
been speedily be- 
gun, a battery of 
seventy - two guns 
was erected on the 
left bank where it 
was higher than the 
right, and where 
was a bend in the 
stream with convex- 
ity toward the Swedes; and under cover of a constant fire, 
directed by the king in person, a bridge was thrown in the 
bend in such a way that the artillery and musketeers on the 
banks could protect it; and when it was nearly done, there 
was set over a party of three hundred Finns, who were con- 
cealed by burning damp straw to produce thick smoke, and 







Crossing of the Lech. 



316 FORCING THE PASSAGE. 

to each of whom was promised ten rix dollars in case of suc- 
cess. In the night of April 14-15 the boat-bridge was com- 
pleted and a bridge-head of earthworks thrown up. The 
king led the infantry across, and sent some of the cavalry 
upstream to ford the river just above the enemy's posi- 
tion, while the rest with the artillery filed across the bridge 
April 16. 

Tilly and the elector strove to interrupt these proceedings. 
They issued from their camp with selected troops, which 
they concealed in a wood on their left, opposite the Swed- 
ish bridge-head, and made from this cover a number of 
attacks on the Swedes, at the same time opening fire from 
all the guns which could be brought to bear on the bridge 
or the advancing enemy. But the cross fire of the Swedish 
batteries inflicted much greater loss on them. The troops 
in the wood were driven out in confusion, and the Swedish 
infantry more than held its own, while the cavalry made a 
demonstration upon their flank. The engagement was of 
no mean proportions; the Swedish cavalry threw back the 
imperial horse which was sent in successive columns against 
them, and the infantry was put in to quite an extent; but 
the affair was in the main an artillery duel. Tilly had his 
thigh shattered by a cannon-ball, of which wound, though 
Gustavus sent him his body-surgeon, the grim old soldier 
died two weeks later, and Aldringer, who succeeded him, 
was wounded in the head. From twelve hundred to two 
thousand men were killed or wounded on the Swedish side ; 
the imperial casualties are stated at four thousand men. 

At the loss of their leaders — the elector being held of 
small account as a soldier — the imperial troops lost heart, 
and took refuge in their intrenched camp. The king made 
no assault, owing to oncoming darkness, ignorance of the 
work, and the exhaustion of his men, but remained on the 



NO PURSUIT UNDERTAKEN. 317 

battle-field. He had gained his object. The imperial army 
had lost morale and organization, and his own had gained 
in equal measure. Though the enemy should have been able 
to hold the works, which were strong, against the attack 
which would have been made next day, the elector retired 
during the night to Neuburg and thence to Ingolstadt, 
where he took up a position surrounding the fortress and 
intrenched. 

Gustavus has been criticised for not following the enemy 
sharply and seeking to beat him in at least a rear-guard 
fight; for their retreat was made in much disorder; but so 
to take advantage of a victory had not yet been recognized 
as a maxim of war. Practically, until Napoleon's day, there 
was no pursuit. Indeed, vigorously to pursue is almost the 
rarest feat of any victorious general. It has not been over 
frequently seen since Napoleon's day. Nor may a captain 
be fairly criticised from, the standpoint of the art of a later 
day. He must be tried by the standard of the art as he 
found it and left it. But it would seem that even if Gustavus 
did not tactically pursue the enemy after the victory on the 
Lech, he might have been wise to follow him up as a stra- 
tegic operation. He could have sent part of his forces to 
Augsburg under Baner or Horn, and have himself sought 
to inflict a fresh defeat on Maximilian before he could 
recover from his late demoralization, or be joined by Wal- 
lenstein. But the king had his own way of doing things; he 
now repeated the procedure which had succeeded so well in 
Pomerania and the Franconian country, and began to oc- 
cupy the newly taken territory in a systematic manner. 

He crossed the Lech, April 17, with the remainder of his 
cavalry and the infantry, took Rain, seized all the towns 
along the right bank of the river to Augsburg, and ordered 
Torstenson and the heavy guns up the left bank to Ober- 



318 ON TO INGOLSTADT. 

hausen; and, to collect victual and contributions from all the 
tributary towns, he sent out a detachment into the Neuburg 
country. Augsburg, though a free city, was held in subjection 
by the imperial garrison. There was a bridge across the Lech, 
but this had been smeared with pitch, preparatory to setting 
it on fire. Gustavus moved up the right bank, camped at 
Lechhausen, and threw his pontoon bridges across the 
stream. 

The triangle Ulni-Augsburg-Donauworth was exception- 
ally strong. Had Gustavus desired it as a defensive " sedem 
belli" as he calls it, he could have held it against large 
odds. But defense was the last thing to think of. Swabia 
occupied, he proposed to move down the Danube, and on 
April 20 he entered Augsburg, which made some opposi- 
tion to his demands, took its oath of fealty and promise of 
contribution, left Lechhausen April 26, and headed down 
the river Paar towards Ingolstadt, the strongest fortress in 
Bavaria. 

Horn was in advance with the cavalry. The main column 
got to Aichach on the 26th, to Schrobenhausen the 27th, 
and to within eight miles of the river opposite Ingolstadt on 
the 28th. In reconnoitring, Gustavus found the enemy on 
the north bank, with a strong bridge-head on the south to 
protect the stone bridge leading across the Danube from 
Ingolstadt. Alongside of this stone bridge the enemy had 
thrown a pontoon bridge, and built a redoubt as its bridge- 
head. At daylight on the 29th an attack was made on this 
redoubt, but the Swedes were driven back with a loss of 
twenty killed. The troops were put into camp opposite 
Ingolstadt. 

Early on April 30 Gustavus made a second reconnois- 
sance, and riding too near the works, had his horse shot 
under him. A cannon-ball passed just behind the calf of 



MAXIMILIAN WORRIED. 319 

his leg and went through the horse, which fell. Without 
any expression of astonishment Gustavus extricated himself, 
mounted another horse and went on with his work. Shortly- 
after, one of the princes of Baden was killed near him by 
a cannon-ball, and when Gustavus returned to camp, these 
events were made the subject of discussion between him and 
his generals at dinner. Among other things Gustavus said: 
"I take God and my conscience to witness, as well as all the 
tribulation I am undergoing and shall undergo, that I have 
left my kingdom and all I deem of value, solely for the 
security of my fatherland, to put an end to the fearful reli- 
gious tyranny which exists, to replace in their rights and free- 
dom the Evangelical princes and estates of Germany, and 
to win for us all a permanent peace." He concluded his 
conversation by referring lightly to his danger: "Whoso 
lives for honor must know how to die for the universal 
good," he said. 

More curious than the military situation was the political 
status. The elector of Bavaria had formerly refused Gus- 
tavus' offers of neutrality; now he was flying from the king 
and appealing for aid to Wallenstein, whose fall he had been 
chiefly instrumental in causing not many months ago; and 
it was he who now desired an accommodation. He made 
propositions for a truce and subsequent peace, but the king 
refused these as the elector had refused his own. He had 
no confidence in Maximilian, and believed, as was the fact, 
that he desired a truce merely to wait for Wallenstein. 

It is thought by some critics that Gustavus should have 
embraced his present opportunity of cutting the elector off 
from Bohemia and Austria; but it was no easy task. After 
Tilly's death Maximilian lost his head, and on May 2 for- 
sook Ingolstadt, which, from the nature of the case, had 
not been yet blockaded. He had lost confidence in his 



320 WALLENSTEIN THREATENS SAXONY. 

army, as his army had in him, and was eager for Wallen- 
stein, to have some strong soul to lean on. He withdrew 
unhindered by Neustadt, where he crossed the river, to Ratis- 
bon, which, though a free city, he occupied by stratagem, 
and thus secured his communications with Bohemia. 

So soon as Gustavus saw that the garrison was being with- 
drawn from the bridge-head redoubt, he stormed it, crossed 
the Danube, sat down to besiege Ingolstadt, and sent Horn 
on to ascertain the enemy's movements. Horn followed to 
Neustadt, found that the Bavarian army had headed to 
Ratisbon, scoured the country thoroughly, and sent detach- 
ments as far as its gates. 

While opening the siege of Ingolstadt, the king heard that 
Wallenstein had left part of his army to worry the elector 
of Saxony, and was advancing on Bavaria with twenty thou- 
sand men. It was important to save Saxony from imperial 
badgering or influence, for comparatively little of either 
might induce John George to make his peace with the 
emperor; and Arnim, who practically controlled him, was 
really in league with Wallenstein. Gustavus deemed it 
wise to make matters so threatening in Bavaria as not only 
to rouse Maximilian to follow and fight him, but to entice 
Wallenstein away from Saxony. He raised the siege of 
Ingolstadt May 4, — he had but just begun the work, — 
left a corps of observation at its gates, and marched into 
the interior of Bavaria. Horn was recalled, and reached 
Wollenzach May 5, took Landshut two days later, and levied 
ten thousand rix dollars contribution. Mosburg fell May 
6, and Freising surrendered and paid its tribute. 

As Gustavus advanced on Munich, he heard that Wallen- 
stein showed no sign of following him. He had miscalcu- 
lated: the Czech was the more intent on Saxony. For a 
moment the king thought he would move to the aid of this, 



A RABID POPULATION. 321 

his most important ally. He prepared to leave Baner in 
Bavaria, to send Horn to help Oxenstiern against the Span- 
iards in the Rhine-Main country, and himself to march to 
succor John George. While so engaged, he heard fresh 
news, —that Wallenstein proposed to join the elector of 
Bavaria with his whole force. This made it imperative that 
Gustavus should not parcel out his own army, but keep well 
concentrated. He reverted to his first view and moved on 
Munich. The capital was taken without difficulty, a contri- 
bution of forty thousand rix dollars was levied, and there 
was found great store of material and guns, of which latter 
one hundred and nineteen buried ones were dug up. Gus- 
tavus remained here three weeks. 

The cities received the Swedes without great difficulty, 
but the population of the country districts of Bavaria and 
Swabia remained hostile, and kept up a constant small war. 
Soldiers who were caught singly or away from their compa- 
nies were visited with mayhem, or death by torture, and 
many hundred soldiers thus perished. Prayers in the Bava- 
rian churches were said to run: "God save us from our 
country's enemy, the Swedish devil." Gustavus took no 
revenge for this conduct, but levied contributions only. To 
Munich he said: "I could inflict on you the penalties of 
Magdeburg, — but fear not, my word is worth more than 
your capitulation papers." 

Gustavus' troops in Swabia had captured Nordlingen, 
Landsberg, Fiissen, Memmingen, Kempten, Leutkirch and 
other places. But the holding was insecure. The peasantry 
rose and killed the Swedish garrisons in some of these towns, 
and a few imperial officers headed the rising, which finally 
reached ten thousand men. Colonel Taupadel was unable 
to handle the business, and Colonel Ruthven from Ulm tried 
his hand with equal unsuccess. Towards the end of May, 



322 BOHEMIA AND SILESIA. 

TJlm was threatened by Ossa with detachments of troops 
raised for Wallenstein. Gustavus left Baner in Munich, 
and started for Ulm, via Memmingen. Here he heard to 
his great distress that the Saxons were treating with Wallen- 
stein, and that the latter had taken Prague. He had paid 
too little heed to the growth in strength of the great Czech 
and to his operations in Bohemia; and yet he could not have 
arrested Wallenstein 's movements without the cooperation 
of the Saxon army, whose theatre was to have been Bohemia, 
but which had as miserably failed in its action as the elector 
had in his promises. 

To go back some months : two imperial generals, Tiefen- 
bach and Gotz, with ten thousand men, had pushed their 
way, in October, 1631, from Silesia into Lusatia and Bran- 
denburg, had, as usual, devastated their route, and had sent 
parties out as far as Berlin and Dresden. Their career was 
happily of no long duration. Ferdinand had made up his 
mind that a policy of excoriation towards Saxony was not a 
paying one, and to try a milder experiment, recalled these 
raiders. After they had left, there moved, in accordance 
with Gustavus' general scheme, from Torgau and Frankfort 
on the Oder into Bohemia and Silesia, a force of Saxons 
under Arnim, of Swedes from the Elbe under Baner, and 
of English under Hamilton, numbering from twenty to 
twenty -five thousand men. In Bohemia they received help 
from the population, and no great imperial force offered 
resistance. On November 10 they took Budin and Prague, 
where they beat the enemy in a smart combat, thrust the 
imperialists back from Nimburg on Tabor, and in Decem- 
ber captured Eger and Pilsen. The emperor was con- 
strained to call to the business Marshal Gallas, who had 
just come up from Italy; but this officer was slow. Every- 
thing was redolent of success. Bohemia was friendly; impe- 



THE RHINE COUNTRY. 323 

rial opposition scarcely existed; the Protestants of Austria 
were gaining heart for action; the Transylvanian prince 
Rakoczi fell upon Hungary and penetrated as far as Austria, 
— an admirable diversion. But the Saxon elector, appar- 
ently on the eve of success, began to listen to the wily coun- 
cils of Arnim, who was in correspondence with Wallenstein, 
and instead of pushing on towards Moravia and into Austria, 
to second Gustavus' manoeuvres, returned to Dresden, sat 
him down, and considered whether he could not make satis- 
factory terms with the emperor and save himself from so 
big a military budget. It was at this time that Wallenstein 
reappeared on the scene in person. This trickery separated 
the English and Swedish brigades from the Saxons; they 
retired from the undertaking, while the Saxons under Arnim 
remained in Bohemia to conduct a petty war and to plunder 
the land. 

The new set of conditions centring about Wallenstein 
induced Gustavus to return to Ingolstadt with his main force. 
William of Weimar was left with a corps in Bavaria, on the 
right bank of the Danube, and Horn with a corps was to 
occupy the upper Rhine and Swabia. Recruiting for the 
Swedes went on even as far as Switzerland. 

Meanwhile the Rhine was a scene of conflict in which 
Swedes, French, Spanish and Germans all bore a hand. A 
French army had appeared in Lorraine to chastise its duke 
for joining Tilly a year before, and, isolated, he was glad to 
return to his fealty on any terms. When Gustavus left the 
Main, he gave the control of the left bank of the Rhine into 
French hands ; for it was better that Richelieu should have 
control here than to let the section lapse into the hands of 
the Spaniards or Austrians. 

Oxenstiern had orders to respect the French holdings, 
little as Gustavus liked the attitude of Richelieu; and the 



324 OUTSIDE OPERATIONS. 

operations of the prince of Orange came to the chancellor's 
aid. But meanwhile the imperialists and Spaniards were 
not idle. Generals Ossa, Fiirstenburg and Montecuculi gave 
trouble; and Count Embden moved up the Rhine capturing 
sundry places. At Speyer a Swedish colonel capitulated, 
but the place was later evacuated by the imperialists. Pap- 
penheim moved from the Weser on the Rhine country. On 
the other hand Horn, who had been ordered to the Rhine 
from the confines of Bavaria, took Lahneck, Stolzenfels and 
Coblenz in July. 

These Hapsburg successes again induced the French, 
despite their strained relations with Sweden, to work against 
the common enemy; and what they did west of the Rhine 
had the effect of making the work on the east bank the 
lighter for Oxenstiern and Horn. 

Then came the king's orders, of which more anon, to 
march to his support in Niirnberg. Oxenstiern left Horn 
to conduct the Moselle campaign, and prepared to send all 
available troops to the main army. 

To the forces of the duke of Wiirtemberg, who had 
declared against the emperor and raised eight thousand men, 
Gustavus added some Alsatian regiments and some of Oxen- 
stiern 's old troops, and this army, under Horri, reduced 
Baden -Durlach, and made a handsome campaign in Alsatia. 

The details of these operations cannot be given. They 
were merely the policing of the outside of the arena, within 
whose bounds the giants struggled for the mastery. 




Match-loek. (16th Century.) 



XXV. 

THE REAPPEARANCE OF WALLENSTEIN. JANUARY TO 

JUNE, 1632. 

Despite Gustavus' open-handed dealing', many princes of Europe did not 
trust him. Unselfish devotion to any cause was too rare to make the king's 
honorable conduct seem real. Too great success had the same effect as too 
great disaster ; suspicion was as bad as abject fear. When Ferdinand found 
himself so hard beset he returned to Wallenstein, the only soldier who might 
stem the engulfing tide. The great Czech, still smarting from his deposition 
in 1630, would make none but his own terms ; and these were practically the 
emperor's transfer of all bis powers on the theatre of war. Thus equipped, 
Wallenstein soon raised an army, and assembling' it in Bohemia, attacked the 
Swedes in their weakest point by tampering' with Saxony. John George, jeal- 
ous of Gustavus' playing first role in Germany, clung to his Third Party to 
offset Gustavus' Corpus JEvangelicorum ; Brandenburg was uncertain ; France 
was fearful of too much Swedish influence ; other powers held aloof. When 
Wallenstein entered Saxony, John George called for aid, and leaving Bane^r to 
continue his work in Bavaria, the king started north with eighteen thousand 
men. He was anxious to interpose between Wallenstein and Maximilian, who 
was marching to join the new commander-in-chief, but was two days late. 
Wallenstein lay at Eger. Gustavus was unable to fathom his design so as to 
determine his own action ; but, having ordered reinforcements from all his lieu- 
tenants, he finally moved to Niirnberg, and put the place in a state of defense. 
Works were erected all round it, and here Gustavus awaited his opponent. 
Instead of smartly attacking the king near Eger with his threefold larger 
force, Wallenstein slowly followed, reaching Niirnberg the end of June. 

The success won by Gustavus Adolphus had not been 
without its disadvantages. As his brothers in the faith had 
looked on him with distrust when he first landed in Ger- 
many, so now both the Protestant and Catholic extremists 
began to fear that the astonishing victories he had won 
might lead the king to extend his empire over Germany. 



326 ' GUSTAVUS' INSECURITY. 

Self-control and honest purpose were not the common attri- 
butes of the rulers of that day; and however frank and con- 
sistent Gustavus had been, few people but fancied that there 
was something back of his generous, outspoken conduct 
which they could not fathom, but none the less dreaded. In 
addition to this the Catholics harbored an especial fear for 
their religion. They knew that the Lutherans had been 
hardly dealt with. When would their own turn come? 
France, too, had begun to see a danger in Swedish victories ; 
Richelieu wanted an agent, if not a tool; he had no use for 
a master, and he was already half inclined to enter the lists 
to put a limit to Gustavus' career of triumph. He would 
surely do so, should it reach a stage dangerous to Europe 
or to France. Richelieu was able to understand Gustavus 
if any one could, but he acted on the theory of distrusting 
every one until he proved himself honest; of not trusting too 
far either honest man or rogue. 

It was true from the other standpoint that Gustavus had 
reached the highest pinnacle of fame and material suc- 
cess, and that the emperor had correspondingly lost. Ferdi- 
nand's case at the end of 1631 was desperate. He had not 
only been beaten in the game of war, but he seemed to have 
forfeited all his friends. He had turned to England, France, 
the Italian princes, the pope, and could get help from none. 
Even the pope was an out and out Gustavus man. Ferdi- 
nand had tried to make peace with the elector of Saxony, 
but Wallenstein, who was smarting from his dismissal, had 
Arnim under his thumb, and Arnim swayed John George. 
His position had grown worse and worse. From the Baltic 
to the boundary of France and to the foothills of Switz- 
erland, the Swedish king had carved his victorious path, 
and now stood in absolute control. France was threat- 
ening Trier, whose elector had been forced into neutrality. 



WALLENSTEIN'S TERMS. 327 

The elector of Mainz, the bishops of Bamberg and Wiirz- 
burg had fled. The elector of Saxony had overrun Bo- 
hemia. The duke of Lorraine had been disarmed. The 
Protestants were everywhere under arms, and there was 
revolution in the Ems country. Bavaria was unreliable. 
The Spaniards had been beaten out of the Lower Palatinate. 
The Turks threatened. The Swiss had all but joined Gus- 
tavus. Ferdinand was not himself capable of commanding 
his armies. What could he do? Wallenstein against him 
was too dangerous. He must win him back or succumb. 
Under these circumstances, towards the close of 1631 the 
emperor turned to the Bohemian, who alone seemed able to 
save him from a further downward course. 

We have seen how Wallenstein had been sowing by all 
waters ; how near he had come to entering into the service 
of Gustavus ; how he had sought means, by negotiations with 
his enemies, of paying back Ferdinand in his own coin. 
Now that he was needed, Wallenstein was not to be had on 
any but the most humiliating terms. He took rather than 
was given the command. The imperial treasury was empty ; 
Ferdinand was at the very end of his resources, material and 
moral; and he stood out against no conditions to buy back 
the only soldier in Germany capable of matching the Swed- 
ish hero. Before Wallenstein would consent to enter the 
lists again, the emperor formally agreed to leave to him 
the exclusive military power over all imperial possessions; 
the civil power over all imperial territory in the possession 
of the enemy, including the right to confiscate lands; the 
absolute right to dictate operations; and in all cases of 
reward and punishment the emperor's action was to require 
Wallenstein 's consent. Ferdinand agreed to stay personally 
away from the army, and to keep it furnished with provi- 
sion, money and material. In addition to this Wallenstein 



328 WALLENSTEIN'S WOLVES. 

was to have free entry into all imperial lands, to be rein- 
stated in the duchy of Mecklenburg, and at the expiration 
of the war, of whose event he had no manner of doubt, to 
be rewarded by one of the imperial hereditary dukedoms. 
He received, in January, 1632, a provisional appointment 
to supreme command for three months ; in April it was made 
permanent. 

Such a contract with a subject was as degrading as it 
was unusual ; and it of necessity meant that, when his use- 
fulness should have past, Wallenstein would be put out of 
harm's way by fair means or foul. There could be no other 
outcome to it. Wallenstein, in assuming command, practi- 
cally put a term to his own career, however brilliant it might 
meanwhile be. 

The promise to victual the new army was a mere farce. 
Ferdinand had no money, and both he and Wallenstein 
knew that the forces must live by plunder. Even the 
Magdeburg wolves were tame compared to the wild beasts 
of Wallenstein's new divisions. Never, perhaps, have so 
many brutes under one standard disgraced the name of 
soldier, in every act except the mere common virtue of cour- 
age. On appointment, Wallenstein at once began to recruit, 
in the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, Silesia, Moravia, 
Croatia, the Tyrol, — everywhere. It was not long before 
his reputation, his riches, his generosity, brought about him 
forty thousand men. These he assembled near Znaim in 
Moravia, twenty -five miles north of Vienna. 

This activity soon changed the political conditions in 
favor of Ferdinand. Wallenstein was a real power as well 
as an able soldier, and his apparent reconciliation with the 
emperor brightened the Catholic horizon beyond anything 
since the horror of Magdeburg. The situation, already 
colored by jealousy of Gustavus, seemed to shift as by the 



THE SAXON WEATHER-COCK. 329 

turning of a kaleidoscope. France was an uncertain ally. 
Brandenburg and Saxony could not be counted on: John 
George bad already invited George William to join in an 
anti-Swedisb alliance. Gustavus' friends in Germany feared 
the result of the reconciliation. These circumstances tended 
to put an end to the king's bold offensive, inclined him to 
greater caution than he had exhibited since Breitenfeld, 
warned him to hold fast to the position he had conquered in 
Bavaria and Swabia, on the upper Danube, on the Main, 
and the Rhenish country, rather than press farther on into 
the bowels of the land. 

The most uncertain element was Saxony. John George 
was born to keep his friends and his enemies in equal per- 
plexity. On the very eve of destruction, he had thrown 
himself into the arms of Gustavus, and the king had treated 
him with exceptional generosity, — a fact of which he now 
seemed oblivious. Under the suasion of Arnim, his every effort 
was to rid himself of Swedish influence. He could not bear 
to have Gustavus enact the first role in Protestant Ger- 
many. John George had long imagined that Gustavus could 
be bought off by money; he now believed that an accession 
of territory would do it. He forgot his own solemn compact 
of the days of sore distress; he could not appreciate the 
danger Sweden was running in this war on German soil. 
He claimed support from Gustavus ; he forswore in the same 
breath the fealty he had pledged to the man who had saved 
Saxony from fire and sword. Gustavus foresaw the vacilla- 
tion of John George ; and he did his best to prevent it. He 
ceased not in his negotiations; he kept a diplomatic agent 
at the elector's elbow; he wearied not in urging John George 
to hold fast to the right, and he promised rescue from Wal- 
lenstein, even as he had delivered him from Tilly. But an 
evil star reigned over the court of Dresden. 



330 SAXONY INVADED. 

Maximilian, fearful of Wallenstein's revenge for his share 
in the latter 's dismissal, begged the emperor to forbid his 
entering Bavaria; but Ferdinand's voice had no weight 
with the new generalissimo. Wallenstein's desire to rescue 
Bohemia from the Saxons, to break their treaty with Gus- 
tavus, to weaken the king's communications with his base, 
and to draw him out of south Germany, was more potent ; 
it constrained the Czech to march to Bohemia rather than 
Bavaria. This he did in February, 1632, and without a 
pretense of opposition, the Saxons fled from Wallenstein's 
army on its first appearance. 

For many months Wallenstein had been tampering with 
Arnim, who practically controlled John George. The Czech 
now represented that he was anxious to keep peace with 
Saxony; he showed the emperor's formal authority, and 
assured the elector that the Edict of Restitution should be 
annulled in his dominions. He pretended that his warlike 
advance was but a matter of form, lest the Jesuits should 
suspect his design; but that he was ready at any time to 
conclude an alliance with John George, who might also per- 
suade Brandenburg to join the compact. The elector was 
disposed to an accord, if it would save his land; but he was 
slow in making up his mind. Meanwhile Wallenstein took 
Prague on May 18, and drove the Saxons back to their own 
borders. 

By this time the king had moved into Bavaria, and Maxi- 
milian again appealed to the emperor, now praying for 
Wallenstein's aid, and agreeing to serve under his com- 
mand. Placated by this concession, Wallenstein left ten 
thousand men under Maradas to protect Bohemia, and 
marched with his army to Eger. From here he made an 
inroad into Saxony, plundering and burning as he advanced. 
He wished to show John George the sort of thing he might 



APPEALS TO JOHN GEORGE. 331 

expect in case he delayed too long. Then, hearing that 
Maximilian was seeking a junction with him, Wallenstein 
returned to Eger, and thence advanced to Tirschenreut, to 
receive the elector, and to gain the advantage which the 
Bavarian army would lend him. 

John George had eighteen thousand foot and eight thou- 
sand horse. This was a large body to throw from one to the 
other side. He lay at Leitmeritz, and a march for Gustavus 
from Munich thither was far from easy. Properly employed, 
there was enough of an army to defend Saxony, while to 
leave the Danube at this moment looked like a sacrifice of 
what had been so far accomplished. Gustavus ceased not 
his negotiations, and urged, in lieu of every other matter, 
his Corpus Evangelicorum. But no appeal to John George 
weighed against what this shortsighted potentate deemed for 
the present advantage of Saxony. 

When Gustavus at Memmingen learned of the fall of 
Prague, he also heard of a raid on Munich by Colonel 
Craatz, who had been sent by the elector to spy out the 
disaster to the land, and who, finding his way barred, sat 
down to besiege Weissemburg. The king had at once deter- 
mined to march north. He returned to Munich at the head 
of a small body of horse, and gathering all the news he 
could, marched to Donauwbrth, which he reached June 12. 
Here he called in Baner with troops from Munich, and some 
regiments from Memmingen. He was too late to save 
Weissemburg, which had capitulated June 7; but as the 
articles of capitulation were broken, he wrote to Maximilian 
demanding Craatz 's punishment, or he would visit the breach 
of faith on Munich. 

Of the first importance was to sustain John George, as a 
political and military necessity. The king sent William of 
Weimar to Magdeburg to collect all the available troops and 



332 GUSTAVUS NOT CONCENTRATED. 

march to Saxony, where he would himself join him, and 
wrote the elector that he should rely on him for victual to the 
daily amount of sixteen thousand pounds of bread, eight 
thousand pounds of beef and sixteen thousand "measures" 
of beer, at the places mentioned on the itinerary, viz. : the 
15th of June, Aschersleben ; 16th, Eisleben and Friedsburg ; 
17th, Halle; 18th, Skeuditz; 19th, Leipsic; 20th, Wiirzen; 
21st, Oschatz; 22d, Meissen; 23, Dresden. As matters even- 
tuated, these supplies were never sent. 

His mind once made up to march north and interpose 
between Wallenstein and the Bavarians, Gustavus left ten 
thousand men under Baner in Bavaria, and Bernard at 
Memmingen, with orders to keep the enemy out of Swabia 
and Bavaria by every practicable means, paying especial 
heed to Augsburg; and started June 14 from Donauworth, 
with ten thousand foot and eight thousand horse, in pursuit 
of Maximilian. On June 16 he was at Schwabach; on the 
18th at Fiirth. 

During the spring of 1632 Gustavus had not kept suffi- 
ciently concentrated. He cannot well be held to have fore- 
seen the turn affairs were to take, but it is scarcely to his 
credit to be forced to move against two armies number- 
ing at least sixty thousand men, with only eighteen thousand 
of all arms, and no reinforcements within many days' march. 
If the monarch is subject to criticism at any time during his 
German campaigns, it is at this moment, and for this lapse. 
Where were the one hundred and fifty thousand men with 
which he was to open the campaign of 1632? The role of 
pacificator, protector, had induced him to spread them all 
over the theatre of war. His desire to rescue his Protestant 
friends led him to prejudice his military standing. 

The immediate task was to interpose between Maximilian 
and Wallenstein: nothing more helpful could be done for 



GUSTAVUS TOO LATE. 333 

John George. It was June 20 that Gustavus learned that 
Maximilian had left garrisons in Ingolstadt and Ratisbon 
and was marching by way of Amberg, and that Wallenstein 
had started from the Eger country to meet him. There was 
just one chance. If he could reach Weiden first, he might still 
head off and beat Maximilian before Wallenstein came up. 
He could reckon on both of these generals being slow. On 
June 21 he left Fiirth via Lauf, and on the 22d was at 
Hersbruck, with van at Sulzbach, which the Bavarians had 
reached June 17. On June 25 the army was at Vilseck, 
where it could threaten the road leading from Amberg to 
Weiden, over which the Bavarians must pass to join Wallen- 
stein. But despite good calculation and good marching, 
Gustavus was just too late. He learned at Vilseck that, the 
day before, the Bavarian van had met Wallenstein 's van at 
Weiden. 

Now comes what some historians have characterized as 
a curious phase in Gustavus' character. Throughout his 
campaigns he had shown caution as remarkable as Caesar's; 
but he had exhibited a boldness and a power of taking and 
holding the initiative which were as wonderful as Alexan- 
der's. All Europe looked with open eyes at this Lion of 
the North, who in two short years had marched from the 
seacoast well up the Oder, to the Elbe, to the Main, to the 
Rhine, to far beyond the Danube, — even to the confines of 
the Alps ; who so covered his ground as to hold against all 
opposition the territory he traversed; who had not only 
beaten the best armies of the empire and the League, but 
had reduced Ferdinand to the very verge of ruin. Here he 
stood, still with the initiative in his hand, and though with 
small numbers, yet with troops flushed with success, and 
able to compass the almost impossible. What would he do? 
For some days Gustavus hesitated; he shifted plans contin- 



334 WHAT COURSE SHALL BE TAKEN? 

ually, and for the first time appeared to forfeit his initiative. 
He had never done this before, except when Saxony stood 
between him and Magdeburg; and there had then been a 
more than valid excuse. To be sure, he was hampered by 
want of troops; he must wait for reinforcements, and was 
necessarily reduced to a role of extreme caution ; but he was 
slower to decide than we have been wont to see him. His 
first idea was that Wallenstein and Maximilian purposed to 
overrun Saxony; and in lieu of marching the Royal Army 
to the aid of the elector, he bethought him to return to the 
Danube, lay siege to Ingolstadt, and seek to draw the enemy 
away from Saxony by a smart diversion on the hereditary 
possessions of Ferdinand. Again, he thought that should 
the enemy actually enter Saxony, he would march to Dresden 
with his own column, sustained by the Rhine and Thurin- 
gian armies. Again, he planned to march via Coburg, draw 
in the Liineburg and Hesse forces, and head for Meissen. 
Again, after a couple of days, as the enemy still remained at 
Eger, Gustavus imagined they might be aiming for Fran- 
conia, or perhaps for Bavaria, and he would stand where he 
was and wait developments. He called in Duke William 
and the duke of Liineburg by rapid marches, via Coburg to 
the Bamberg country, while Landgrave William should 
remain as a check to Pappenheim. But Hersbruck, where 
he now lay, lacked victual, and was a bad point for a ren- 
dezvous, and if Gustavus was to give up offensive action, it 
was evident that he must retire. 

Should he move to the Main — the natural rendezvous? 
That would be to give up Bavaria, and especially Nurnberg, 
which was not to be thought of. Finally, Gustavus settled 
on Nurnberg for concentration, as the place where he was 
nearest to all the points demanding his attention. 

This apparent indecision has been much discussed, and by 



A HYPERACTIVE MIND. 335 

some critics has been held up against the king. It does not 
appear to need much notice, except because it has already 
provoked it. Gustavus with his small force had merely been 
mentally alert, while his bulky opponents, Wallenstein and 
Maximilian, had inertly lain in quarters, waiting for the 
king to decamp. The fact is that Gustavus had a hyper- 
active mind; we have seen evidences of it before. He was 
continually conjuring up some new idea as to what the enemy 
might do, and framing schemes to counteract it. He was, 
so to speak, constantly casting an anchor to windward. He 
wrote much to Sweden, or to Oxenstiern, or to some inti- 
mate ; he was free in stating his plans to his correspondents ; 
and this amplitude of resources looks like indecision, when 
it was a mere discussion of hypothetical cases. Gustavus 
did not, like Caesar, write commentaries at the close of his 
campaign, in which he could state motives which accorded 
with the event; he wrote as and when he thought, in the 
midst of the utter uncertainty of events, and he voiced his 
every idea. The apparent indecision was a mere habit of 
thinking aloud. What great captain who always voiced his 
thoughts would escape the charge of indecision? We judge 
the captain Alexander from the records of his friends; Han- 
nibal from the story of his enemies; Csesar from what he 
himself penned after the achievement; Frederick from his 
silent deeds alone; and we are but even now finding what 
the real Napoleon was, from the memoirs of his contempo- 
raries. What we know of Gustavus is largely drawn from 
his own letters written at the moment. Let us be slow to 
criticise. 

Consistency is a jewel, no doubt ; but a man who is honest 
with himself, and who keeps up with the events of stirring 
times, cannot always be consistent. What seems true to-day 
may prove false to-morrow; the wise step of the morning 



336 KEEPING FAITH WITH NURNBERG. 

may be a fatal one at sundown. As events chase each other 
onward, no one can long remain of the same mind. In a 
certain sense consistency is narrowness, and in this sense the 
great Swede was broad ; he took no pains to conceal a change 
of purpose when he made it. 

The forces Gustavus reckoned on concentrating by mid- 
June at Hersbruck, or in the Niirnberg region, were : — 

Foot. Horse. 

Royal Army, now numbering 9,000 6,500 

Duke of Weimar, from the Saale .... 4,000 1,500 

Oxenstiern, from the Rhine 4,000 1,500 

Duke of Liineburg, from the Weser . . . 2,000 1,500 

Landgrave of Hesse, from Cologne . . . 2,000 1,500 

Baudissin, from lower Saxony 3,000 2,000 

Total . 24,000 14,500 

In addition to which Saxony was to furnish 6,000 foot, 4,000 horse. 
Grand total, 30,000 foot, 18,500 horse. Later, Bernard from Swabia 
and Bandr from Bavaria were ordered to Niirnberg. 

When Gustavus definitely ascertained that his operation 
to hinder the enemy's junction had failed, and comprehended 
that Wallenstein might now operate on his communications 
with north Germany, he all the more stood firmly for Niirn- 
berg. He had visited the place June 19, when the army 
was at Fiirth, had inspected the walls and works, and dis- 
cussed peace and the Corpus Bvangelicorum with the coun- 
cil. To protect this city, to lure Wallenstein from Sax- 
ony, and to act on the defensive until he could recruit his 
forces, was now his manifest role. 

A strong sense of fidelity was mixed with the king's deci- 
sion to march to Niirnberg: he could not desert the city he 
had agreed to stand or fall by. There was no force majeure 
as there was at Magdeburg. He had no choice. Niirnberg 
was at that time the cross-roads of the great routes between 



CORPUS EVANGELICORUM. 337 

Saxony and the Main, the upper Rhine and the Danube 
countries. The city was Gustavus' choicest ally, and held 
not only a Swedish and friendly garrison, but a large supply 
of victual and material of war. 

Despite these advantages, Niirnberg was not his best 
place. From a military standpoint, Mainz or Wiirzburg 
was preferable. At Mainz the king was more strongly 
posted; at Wiirzburg, with Oxenstiern in the Palatinate, 
and Bernard in Swabia, he would have been at the apex of 
a strong triangle; and the only outside enemy was Pap- 
penheim on the Weser, and he was neutralized by Tott. 
Maximilian would not have moved far from Bavaria, and 
of Wallenstein Gustavus had no fear, so soon as he backed 
tip against his reserves. Once defeat Wallenstein, and Fer- 
dinand would be hopeless. This was the purely military 
aspect, but the moral fact remained that he might not desert 
Niirnberg. Moreover the king was unwilling to leave south 
Germany, lest he should create an unfortunate impression, 
lose the fruits of his hard-won successes, and prejudice his 
new-made allies. The alternative of battle remained; but he 
could not now advance on Wallenstein, having no more than 
a third his force. For Wallenstein numbered more than 
sixty thousand men, and rumor ran that Pappenheim was 
on the march to join him. 

Quite apart from the military situation, Gustavus was 
ready to make a universal peace, if it included the Corpus 
Evangelicorum. This project he had submitted to John 
George some time since ; he now again did so to Niirnberg, 
and it was made a subject of careful consideration as to 
means and terms. Gustavus could certainly have made 
peace with Ferdinand, and have kept for himself Mecklen- 
burg and Pomerania. But what then became of the Corpus 
Evangelicorum, for which he had sacrificed so much? 



338 



ARRIVAL AT N URN BERG. 



Gustavus had sent ahead his engineer, Hans Olaf, to 
examine the defenses of Niirnberg. Arrived there June 29, 
he inspected the works in person, and gave directions where 
to build new intrenchments. He made requisition on Niirn- 
berg for fourteen thousand pounds of bread a day; the 
balance he expected to get from Franconia. Returning to 
Hersbruck, he started with the army on July 1. The foot 






p 5^ 1)^ 


5 » &\, Q « ° <?£/>,, 


\f°*&i?i 


AV&'A'&i 



Niirnberg. 

marched direct; the horse via Altdorf ; on July 3 the army 
arrived at Niirnberg, and with the aid of the citizens, Gus- 
tavus began to surround the town with a cordon of redoubts. 
Niirnberg is irregularly oval in shape from northeast to 
southwest, and the Pegnitz runs through it from east to 
west. The walls were good, and the citizens had already 
done much to strengthen them. Gustavus planned a new 
set of outer works, according to the most approved Swedish 



DEFENSES OF NURNBERG. 339 

theory; soldiers and citizens were alike told off in fatigue 
parties; all worked with a will, and in fourteen days the 
task was done. These works, destined to contain the Swed- 
ish army, were strongest on south and west, for Gustavus 
rightly conjectured that Wallenstein, if he followed him, as 
was hardly to be questioned, would camp on the hills at 
the foot of which the Rednitz ran, and which lay on the 
southwest of, and four miles from, the town across the plain. 
The moat was twelve feet wide and eight feet deep, and the 
line was strengthened by a great number of minor works. 
A new redoubt was built at the entrance of the river Pegnitz 
into the city, and one at its outlet, and a ravelin and a horn- 
work were constructed between the Spittler and the Lady 
Gates on the south of the town. A line of earthworks 
extended around the entire place, from the market village 
of Wohrd on the east to the Judenbuhl on the north, and 
round to the Pegnitz at St. John's. On the other side of 
the Pegnitz were two extensive redoubts, at the "White 
Lead Garden " and the Gostenhof , connected by suitable 
works and ditches, and in front of the Gostenhof redoubt 
were several outworks and half -moons. South of the city 
gates was meadow land, which was protected by extra strong 
works, one between Steinbuhl and Schweinau, another 
between Steinbuhl and the city; and on the Rotenbach road, 
on the edge of the wood, there was a strong redoubt, and 
still another on the Altdorf road. The works, broadly 
speaking, formed a big bow on the north of the city from 
the outlet of the Pegnitz to its inlet. On the south there 
were two bows, one from the Pegnitz inlet and one from its 
outlet, both ending at the main gates. On these works 
Gustavus mounted some three hundred guns of all sizes, the 
captured Bavarian and Swabian guns among them. 

The good spirits and the determination of the Number- 



340 WALLENSTEIN ARRIVES. 

gers to stand by Gustavus were marked. All citizens from 
eighteen to fifty years old were put under arms. The elderly 
men undertook guard duty in the town and on the town 
walls. For the outworks, there were made up of the enrolled 
young men twenty-four bodies of from eighty-one to one 
hundred and fourteen men, each known by a red and white 
flag, and on a blue square in the upper corner a golden 
letter of the alphabet. The militia was about three thousand 
strong, plus two regiments of recruits, one being of three 
thousand, one of eighteen hundred men. Thus from the 
Niirnbergers Gustavus had eight thousand foot and three 
hundred horse. 

The Swedish troops outside the city were at first well 
supplied with rations; but these soon rose in price, and some 
excesses were complained of. These breaches of discipline 
were treated summarily, by hanging the common soldiers, 
and making the officers pay heavy damages. There was, no 
doubt, cause of complaint ; but the Swedes were angels com- 
pared to the fiends in Wallenstein's army. The king or- 
dered the population to bring into the town all the provisions 
of the adjoining country. The several armies or reinforce- 
ments had already been ordered to head towards Niirnberg. 
The king pushed out a part of the cavalry to Neumarkt to 
reconnoitre. This party was, however, driven in, and Wal- 
lenstein moved with more than sixty thousand men to Niirn- 
berg, reaching the place early in July. 




Arquebus. (16th Ceutury.) 



XXVI. 

NURNBERG. JULY AND AUGUST, 1632. 

If Gustavus is taxable with ill management for being in Wallenstein's front 
with but a third his force, his activity made up for lack of numbers. Wallen- 
stein erected a vast camp four miles from Niirnberg, and strengthened it by 
every means known to the military art ; but he showed no symptom of attack. 
He was more than cautious. Gustavus waited for his reinforcements. There 
were sixty thousand men in the imperial camp, one hundred and twenty thou- 
sand souls in Niirnberg, and supplies soon ran short. Nothing but small war 
was waged. Gustavus captured a convoy, and Wallenstein took some adjoin- 
ing towns. In the crowded city sickness supervened. In this starving-match 
neither side could claim an advantage. Gustavus was not certain that Wallen- 
stein might not decamp and march toward Franconia or the north, and so 
ordered his arriving reinforcements as to head off either movement. Finally, 
in mid-August, Oxenstiern arrived. By every rule of warfare Wallenstein 
should have attacked Oxenstiern or Gustavus before the junction ; but he did 
neither. Gustavus marched out, ready for battle, but there was no stir in the 
imperial camp, and he met his lieutenant at Bruck. 

If caution as a general may be said to have been one of the 
solid merits of Gustavus, so may it be called one of the glar- 
ing defects of Wallenstein. Though outnumbering his oppo- 
nent three to one, the imperial general remained at Eger 
until Gustavus withdrew from his front. Having argued out 
his course for this campaign, he had concluded to play a 
waiting game. Wallenstein had not the instinct of battle 
which inspired Gustavus : against an enemy whom he had 
contemptuously threatened to drive from before him with a 
rod, and whom he ought to have crushed in the first engage- 
ment, he deliberately declined to undertake the offensive. So 
soon as the Swedish army left his front, he followed on sev- 



342 



TAUPADEL PUNISHED. 



eral roads via Tirsckenreut, Weiden, Amberg and Sulzbach, 
which place he left July 5 for Lauterhofen. In this town 
Gustavus had left a detachment under Taupadel, who, out 
with a regiment of dragoons and some squadrons of cuiras- 
siers on a reconnoissance, learned that the enemy's artillery, 
covered by four thousand men, was in Neumarkt. More 
brave than discreet, Taupadel sallied forth to attack Neu- 
markt, ran across the enemy, was lured into an ambush, and 
on July 6 was all but annihilated. The king heard of his 







The Rival Camps. 



dilemma and sought to cut him out, but the harm was done 
before he could come up. 

On July 10, at Neumarkt, the Bavarian and imperial 
armies were completely merged. As to their strength, author- 
ities vary between sixty and eighty thousand men. Next day 
Roth and Schwabach were seized, and the upper Rednitz was 
occupied. Marching out with his cavalry by way of Furth, 
Gustavus carefully observed his opponent, and drew up in 
line at Cadolzburg, in a position whose flanks were secure. 



WALLENSTEIN'S CAMP. 343 

Far too weak for battle, he yet invited attack, which Wallen- 
stein declined. " There has been enough fighting ; I will 
show them another method," said the Czech. 

Gustavus' road to Donauworth was now cut off. After a 
two days' rest, the enemy advanced to Stein, and here and at 
Zirndorf they intrenched a camp some four miles from Niirn- 
berg, which in three days, by employing large details, was 
completed. It stretched from Stein to Fiirth along the left 
bank of the Rednitz ; it had a circumference of a dozen 
miles, and was cut in halves by the little stream Bibert, 
which empties into the Rednitz. Over the Bibert, within the 
lines, were a wagon bridge and a foot bridge. The east and 
north sides of the camp were the more strongly intrenched. 
The south and larger half contained the villages of Kreutles 
and Altenburg, and was well fortified at its southeast extrem- 
ity. Opposite Gerbersdorf the trees were cut down, and 
redoubts built along the Rednitz. A strong square redoubt 
lay on the southwest corner. The smaller north half, around 
Zirndorf, was the strongest part of the camp ; it leaned on 
wooded hills, and was especially well defended on the east 
side, where it had three redoubts, with a fourth one in front 
and opposite Dambach. Three strong batteries were estab- 
lished at the most northerly point of the e?iceinte, and the 
heights were made as safe as art could do it. In the wood at 
ihe northern extremity, on the Burgstall, a hill two hundred 
and fifty feet above the Rednitz, lay a ruined castle, called 
the Alte Veste, with a lodge near by; and these were pe- 
culiarly strengthened, being surrounded by palisades and 
ditches ; heavy guns were mounted, and through the woods 
slashings were cut for their fire. Further to the west lay one 
more strong, square fort. The rest of the camp had only a 
single wall and ditch. 

The Swedes had sought to interfere with these operations, 



344 WALLENSTEIN'S WEAK METHOD. 

but had, whenever a small party ventured out and crossed 
the Rednitz, been thrust back ; and when Gustavus, at the 
head of a big division of horse, filed out one day, in the hope 
of luring the enemy from his defenses, he was unable to 
induce a single regiment to come forth. Wallenstein's new 
method manifestly excluded fighting, unless he was forced 
into it. 

Despite his vast superiority of numbers, and though the 
elector urged an attack, lest his land should be entirely eaten 
out, the imperial commander refrained from a vigorous policy 
against the king, fancying that he could blockade him in 
Niirnberg and compel him by hunger to submit to a peace. 
He had already cut him off from Swabia and Bavaria, and 
he harbored great faith in this Fabian policy. The conception 
of the plan cannot be said to do credit to Wallenstein's in- 
telligence or energy ; but the execution was consistent and 
thorough. The method was weak, but Wallenstein was well 
adapted to the task. He was brought to it, moreover, by the 
fact that the king's fortified camp was exceptionally strong, 
and that, according to the ideas of the times, it was unwise 
to attack intrenchments even with overwhelming forces. It 
was Wallenstein's habit not to fight unless all the conditions 
were beyond question in his favor, — or he had to. He had 
conceived a different opinion of the ability of the Snow King 
from what he originally held, and was unwilling to operate 
against him by any but the very safest system. No really 
great man ever more markedly lacked the fighting instinct ; 
and that Wallenstein was a great man — a great soldier — is 
not to be questioned. Again, Wallenstein estimated the pro- 
vision of the allies to be much more limited than it really 
was ; and it is alleged that, being a devout believer in astrol- 
ogy, he had had it foretold him that Gustavus' fortune would 
last only till toward the close of the current year. For some 



HIS POSITION AND TROOPS. 345 

months the king had shown a willingness to conclude peace, 
on terms which should protect both Sweden and the German 
Protestants, a fact which Wallenstein misconstrued. He was 
far from understanding the firm character of the monarch, 
and the impossibility of compelling him to a peace which he 
would feel to be harmful to his allies or to Sweden, or in the 
slightest degree derogatory to his own dignity. Gustavus 
better understood Wallenstein. He knew him to be an ambi- 
tious man and an able soldier ; but he did not credit him 
with being a great general. As Wallenstein had originally 
erred in underrating Gustavus, so Gustavus now erred — but 
in a lesser degree — in underrating Wallenstein, for the 
Bohemian had a marvelous power of biding his time, and a 
conception of strategy leagued to politics beyond that of any 
man of his day, — save only the king. That the quality of 
Wallenstein's troops was not high Gustavus knew, while his 
own, though few, were of the very best. He believed that, 
despite his small force, he could hold his own until his rein- 
forcements arrived, and, as he was habituated to do, he put 
his trust in Providence, and relied upon his army and his 
own genius. 

Wallenstein was surrounded by his old officers, Gallas and 
Aldringer, Holcke, Sparre and Piccolomini among them ; 
but it cannot be said that his men were of the best. There 
was not the leaven in the imperial army which the rugged, 
honest Swede made in the body commanded by Gustavus, 
although this, too, had its questionable elements. But Wal- 
lenstein's position was strategically and tactically a strong- 
one. It commanded the road from Niirnberg to the Main 
and the middle Rhine country, as well as those to Bavaria 
and Swabia ; it was, in the light of those days, in the light 
of almost any day, inexpugnable ; and the Czech was strong 
on the defensive, and believed that he was so placed as to 



346 A BRILLIANT FORAY. 

await events longer than his enemy. Detachments of restless 
Croats were sent out to the north, south and even east of 
Niirnberg, to seize and keep the roads the more effectually, 
and with orders to hold the Swedes to their defenses and pre- 
vent their foraging. 

In this situation the rival armies lay for weeks, waging 
only a small war, in which the Swedes were generally suc- 
cessful. The most important of these operations was an 
attack of Wallenstein's, July 15, on a part of the Swedish 
defenses erroneously pointed out to him as a vulnerable spot, 
which, not driven home, failed with a loss of three hundred 
men ; but on August 6 the imperialists captured the fortress 
of Lichtenau, by which they could threaten the king's com- 
munications with Wiirteniberg. To offset this, Gustavus sent 
out Taupadel, with three regiments of dragoons and cuiras- 
siers, to capture a train of a thousand wagons of victual which 
was on the way to Wallenstein's camp from Bavaria, and on 
August 9 Taupadel escaladed Freistadt and captured the 
convoy. On his way back he met Gustavus, who had gone 
out to sustain him with three thousand men. Wallenstein 
had dispatched a force to intercept Taupadel, but its com- 
mander, Sparre, was not fortunate. He had four squadrons 
of cavalry, twenty companies of Croats and five hundred foot. 
The king attacked him with his customary fury, riding into 
the midst of the combat, in which he lost a number of his 
escort, but after a short, sharp fight he corraled the whole 
force. Sparre was himself taken prisoner. The officers en- 
gaged were rewarded with gold medals, and each man was 
given a rix dollar. 

The opposing forces remained inactive. Gustavus waited 
far beyond his calculation for his reinforcements ; and it was 
fortunate that Wallenstein was unwilling to attack, and pre- 
ferred the slower process of starvation. So far-seeing had 



HUNGER AND DISEASE. 347 

the king's preparations been that for some weeks there was 
no scarcity of food in the city and camp beyond what is com- 
mon in any beleaguered place. There was, however, lack of 
forage for the beasts, and many died. Wallenstein's Croats 
were the more able foragers, and soon had better mounts to 
keep up the work. Foreseeing want of bread, should the 
imperial general persist in his policy, Gustavus offered to 
make peace if Niirnberg so elected, but the city bravely 
stood to its guns. Actual hunger first appeared in Niirn- 
berg ; then in the Swedish camp ; last in "Wallenstein's. 
This general's severity and natural lack of feeling stood him 
in good stead in holding down his men. 

It did not take long to reduce both armies to a pitiable 
condition. There were one hundred and thirty-eight bakers 
in Niirnberg, but they could not bake bread fast enough to 
fill the hungry mouths of citizens, soldiers and numerous 
refugees. All told, there were one hundred and twenty-five 
thousand souls ; the companion of hunger, disease, by and by 
set in, and ere long deaths grew beyond the capacity to bury. 
Corpses lay in the streets ; the graveyard and the pauper's 
ditch were filled ; lack of forage had killed half the horses, 
and the stench of decaying carcases and unburied bodies bred 
a pestilence. Under circumstances like these, order could not 
always be preserved ; it was a wonder that it was preserved 
so well. In the imperial camp matters were not much bet- 
ter ; hunger and disease claimed an almost equal number of 
victims. 

This sitting down to starve each other out seems an unwar- 
ranted method of conducting war, as well as a costly one ; 
but it was with good reason that Gustavus remained quiet, 
for he could neither desert Niirnberg nor strike until he 
could gather his forces. Whatever the king's excuse, there 
was no good reason for Wallenstein's failure to bring about 



348 HEADING OFF WALLENSTEIN. 

active work before Gustavus could be reinforced. Those who 
claim for the Bohemian an ability beyond his contemporaries 
are called on to explain this singular want of enterprise, as 
well as other lapses in the Niirnberg campaign. 

Gustavus had not been, and still was not, certain as to what 
Wallenstein's movements would be. When at Niirnberg he 
heard of his march on Schwabach, he imagined that his pur- 
pose might be to march to the Rhine or to Wiirzburg, or to 
interpose between Oxenstiern and himself. This would be a 
serious matter, and Gustavus altered his former orders to his 
lieutenants. He instructed Oxenstiern to march to Wiirz- 
burg, and to keep in touch with the enemy, hold the Main, 
and prevent Wallenstein from getting victual from that 
region. Baner he ordered to leave Ulm and Augsburg 
strongly garrisoned, and to join Oxenstiern at Wiirzburg. 
Loth to give up his hold on either the Main or the Danube, 
the king's idea was to keep a line of strong places between 
these rivers, along the Tauber and the Wormitz, — Mergen- 
theim, Rothemburg, Dinkelsbukl, Nordlingen, — to head off 
Wallenstein from marching to the Rhine. The position at 
Niirnberg would cut him off from the Bamberg and Culm- 
bach country, and compel him to victual from Bavaria or the 
eaten-out Upper Palatinate, and perhaps to retire from want 
of food, as Wallenstein was seeking to make him do. 

Swabia proved a weak link. Baner and Bernard had at 
first done well, and had extended their holdings, but General 
Craatz, sustained by the Catholic population, had then forced 
them back to Augsburg; had taken Friedberg, Landsberg 
and Fiissen, and had even entered into secret dealings with 
Augsburg. Baner found that neither he nor Bernard could 
leave the country until Craatz was definitely beaten. 

On July 30 Bernard was at Fiissen, Baner in Dietfurt. 
Oxenstiern had reached Wiirzburg July 23 with seven thou- 



OXENSTIERN' S PLAN. 349 

sand nien, — none too soon, as Wallenstein's light cavalry 
was overrunning the region ; and the landgrave joined the 
chancellor with four thousand more on the 28th. Duke Wil- 
liam, who was marching on Saxony, on receiving his new 
orders, headed for the Main, and on the 27th was at Hild- 
burghausen, where he received a reinforcement of four foot 
and two horse regiments from Saxony. From the news 
received from Baner and Bernard, Oxenstiern made up his 
mind that it was not possible to carry out the king's orders. 
He could not hold the line from Wiirzburg to Donauworth 
with his own troops alone. In view of the approach of the 
landgrave, of Duke William and the Saxons, he adopted a 
plan of his own, viz. : to hold the strong places on the Main, 
leave a free corps to manoeuvre in the region, and to march 
with the rest up river to the Bamberg territory. Duke Wil- 
liam from Schweinfurt, which he had reached, was to meet 
him near Hassfurt, and between them they would use up 
Holcke, who was assembling in the vicinity. Should Holcke 
retire from Bamberg, they would follow him up, beat him, 
and be ready to join Gustavus at Niirnberg when desired. 
The chancellor began to execute this scheme July 31, and 
did actually drive back the enemy towards Bamberg, and 
recapture Hassfurt. 

This change Gustavus did not approve. He still desired 
to keep W alien stein from marching to the Rhine, or from 
victualing on the Main country, as he imagined he might. 
He preferred a concentration near Rothemburg, with an ad- 
vance on Anspach or Lichtenau, from whence Oxenstiern 
could either join Gustavus or push the enemy. The advan- 
tage of this plan was the control of a rich country for victual- 
ing. Holcke could be disregarded ; for with the strong places 
in the Bamberg country held by the Swedes, he could accom- 
plish no permanent harm. Gustavus' plan would keep Wal- 



350 OXENSTIERN'S ROUTE. 

lenstein away from Swabia, which Oxenstiera's plan would 
not ; and if the game was to be famine, the king was anxious 
to confine him to a limited area. Still Gustavus, who reposed 
the greatest confidence in his chancellor, wrote him to act as 
appeared most advantageous; but urged him to keep the 
main intention in view, to get together the troops, keep up 
communications with Niirnberg, and not to be drawn into 
battle before joining the king. This Oxenstiern did. Duke 
William joined him August 16 at Kitzingen ; and all Swa- 
bian forces which could possibly be spared marched towards 
him, Ruthven being left to hold the land. 

Baner had lately been successful in that region. He had 
recaptured Friedburg and Landsberg, and pushed Craatz out 
of the country. On August 7 he reached Nordlingen in obe- 
dience to Oxenstiern's call, awaited Bernard from Ottingen, 
and August 15 both stood at Kitzingen. 

To reach Gustavus, three roads were open to the new army : 
to move direct towards the enemy and intrench in his front ; 
or via Anspach to the south of him ; or to Windsheim or 
Neustadt on the Aisch, then down to the Aurach at Ems- 
kirchen, and the Rednitz at Bruck, and thus pass to the north 
of him. Gustavus preferred the last because, once at Bruck, 
the enemy could not hinder the junction ; but he wisely left 
the decision to Oxenstiern, bidding him not to call the enemy 
down upon himself. In case of attack he must hold himself 
at least a day, the king would come to his relief, and between 
them they would give the enemy a beating. These prelimi- 
nary instructions were rendered nugatory by Wallenstein's 
remaining inert, but they were much in the king's style ; 
and so soon as he concluded that Wallenstein would venture 
nothing, he bade Oxenstiern hurry forward his troops. 

The chancellor broke up from Kitzingen August 17 ; on 
the 19th he was at Windsheim, and rested two days. Receiv- 



OXENSTIERN ARRIVES. 351 

ing Gustavus' orders to march direct to Bruck, after a day 
of prayer on the 22d, — rather an odd delay under existing 
orders, — he moved to Neustadt the 23d, and on to Bruck, 
where he found that Gustavus had built a bridge across the 
Rednitz. Wallenstein could now no longer prevent the junc- 
tion, if he wished to do so. The king's small army of twenty 
thousand men had been reinforced by Oxenstiern's thirteen 
thousand, the landgrave's four thousand, the duke's six thou- 
sand, and five thousand Saxons, to more than double its 
strength. 

By every rule of the art, even in that day, Wallenstein 
should have taken steps to prevent these reinforcements from 
reaching the king. That he would do so was anticipated and 
provided for in Gustavus' movements ; that he did not was 
made a matter of sneering criticism in the Swedish camp. 
Gustavus now welcomed a general engagement as an outlet 
to a situation which every day and every additional mouth 
rendered more critical. But Wallenstein kept close to his 
lines, and it is distinctly to his discredit to have done so. 
His conduct has been called Fabian, but the phrase is not a 
happy one. Fabius had no troops which could encounter 
Hannibal's. He refused to fight, because there was no gain 
in fighting. Hannibal had shown the Romans all too often 
that he could beat them under any conditions in the field ; 
Fabius chose a policy of small war, of cutting Hannibal's 
communications, of fighting detached forces ; and, having 
chosen it, he carried it out, and so worked as seriously to 
hamper the Carthaginians. But Wallenstein had a huge 
overweight of men, not, to be sure, the equals of the Swedish 
veterans, but troops which had been under his command for 
six to eight months, largely composed of mercenaries who were 
old soldiers, and men who shortly at Liitzen showed that they 
could fight ; he had always boasted that he was in every mili- 



352 WALLENSTE1N LETHARGIC. 

tary respect Gustavus' superior ; his one chance of annihilat- 
ing the Snow King, at whom he had jeered for years, was in 
delivering battle while Gustavus had 'but a fraction of his 
force, and in then turning on his lieutenants ; and to do this 
he had had abundant opportunity, gallantly offere'd him by the 
battle-eager Swede. But Wallenstein did nothing. Fabius 
in his own way was active ; Wallenstein was lethargy itself. 

The utmost that can be said for him was that he lacked 
confidence in his troops ; but he was not occupying a position 
where he could better them. If he desired opportunity for 
organization and discipline, he had ill chosen time and place. 
Deliberately to starve any army is a poor way of preparing 
it for battle. After this criticism, however, it is but justice 
to say that to the plan which Wallenstein had with premedi- 
tation adopted, he clung with perfect consistency. The plan 
itself ranks him low as a general ; the execution of the plan 
was masterly. 

Having heard that Oxenstiern had reached Bruck, the 
king, with part of his forces, moved out to meet him, fully 
prepared for attack in case Wallenstein should interfere with 
his manoeuvre. But there was not even a show of it, and the 
king and his lieutenant safely joined hands. 





Swords. (16th Century.) 



XXVII. 

THE ASSAULT ON THE ALTE VESTE. SEPTEMBER, 1632. 

Additional forces consumed more food. Starvation was depleting both 
armies. Gustavus sought battle. On August 31 he drew up in order along the 
Rednitz to invite Wallenstein out, but the Czech would not stir. Next day 
Gustavus bombarded his camp, but with no better result. The king was bound 
to have the matter out. He could fight, but not bear his men's distress. On 
September 2 he captured Fiirth. To effect a lodgment here, the strongest 
point, would command the enemy's entire camp ; to force an entrance elsewhere 
would not do so. On September 3 the king assaulted the Alte Veste. He 
had calculated to get artillery up the hill to force his way, in, but no guns 
could be hauled up ; the Swedes had but their muskets, pikes and brave hearts 
to break down defenses manned by cannon and equal numbers. For a whole 
day and night, and next morning, they stood to their work like heroes, at a 
loss of perhaps four thousand men ; but in vain ; Gustavus retired baffled. 
Still he nearly succeeded, and he deserves credit for showing the world that 
good infantry may attack stout works heavily manned, with the hope of carry- 
ing them. The Swedes were beaten, but not demoralized. Wallenstein took no 
advantage of his victory. The armies remained two more weeks on the spot. 
On September 17 the king sent Wallenstein a formal challenge to come out to 
battle, and drew up on the 18th to meet him. But the Czech did not budge. 
Disheartened, Gustavus moved towards Wiirzburg. Three days later Wallen- 
stein decamped and marched to Forscheim. 

The concentration of his forces gave Gustavus nearly fifty 
thousand men ; but it ran up the number to be fed, including 
Niirnberg, to thrice as many. The situation grew critical. 
There was little food left, and no forage within twenty miles ; 
the whole vicinity had been eaten up. Disease and hunger 
made big gaps in the Swedish ranks, and yet more among the 
citizens. Matters were not better in Wallenstein's camp. 
Fugger had arrived from Bavaria with eight thousand men, 



354 GUSTAVUS BOUND TO FIGHT. 

and though Wallenstein sent Holcke with six thousand to 
Saxony, he still had over forty-five thousand men in camp. 
Here were two hundred thousand mouths crying for bread. 
The exhaustion of the country, the small war waged by the 
Swedes, and the capture of his great convoy brought grave 
distress to the imperialists. At Eger, Wallenstein had had 
sixty thousand men. Sundry detachments and depletion from 
want of victual had run down this force by a good quarter. 
The number is given in the Swedish archives as thirty-six 
thousand men ; but there is some error in the estimate. Both 
Swedish camps — Bruck and Niirnberg — had, say letters of 
that day, to be rationed from Niirnberg. This is hard to 
understand : convoys might have come from the Main coun- 
try. However this may be, the king's present equality of 
forces, and the bald fact that he could not long hold starva- 
tion aloof, induced him to move on the enemy. To beat or 
force him back from Niirnberg was the only outlet, and he 
sought to entice Wallenstein from his intrenchments. 

It was on Tuesday, August 31, that out of both the camps 
the Swedish army debouched for battle. The lines about 
Niirnberg were occupied by the militia, and a camp guard 
was left at Bruck. The forces united in Kleinreut, and went 
into battle order opposite the imperial camp along the Kcd- 
nitz, with three heavy batteries suitably posted. 

Here was a challenge to tempt any soldier. But Wallen- 
stein raised not a finger. A mere artillery fire, not even a 
severe one, was all he condescended to. A couple of small 
bodies issued from the gates, and advanced to skirmishing 
contact, but on being pressed by the Swedes, retired quickly 
within walls. In one of these skirmishes Baner was unfor- 
tunately wounded. Remaining in position, the Swedes threw 
up intrenchments for the batteries during the night ; and the 
next day bombarded the enemy's camp. But on account of 



HE CHOOSES A POINT. 355 

its vast area the fire was ineffective, and the reply was 
weak. 

As Wallenstein's camp lay close to the edge of the Red- 
nitz, an attack upon it by fording the river was hardly advis- 
able, lest the men, disarranged by crossing in the teeth of 
the enemy, should be unable to resist a stout sally. But the 
matter must be brought to a head. The king lacked the 
patience of Wallenstein. Whatever we may say of the want 
of audacity of the imperial general (and he was the very 
opposite of Napoleon's " De l'audace, encore de 1'audace, 
toujours de l'audace ! "), we cannot deny him the ability to 
hold in hand a large body of the most insubordinate elements 
during a period of the utmost distress ; or the persistency to 
carry through his plan without swerving, however tempted 
by his enemy to the arbitrament of battle. This is no small 
honor. 

During the night of September 1-2, Gustavus, intent on 
battle, broke up from camp, captured Fiirth, crossed the 
Rednitz, and, opposite Wallenstein's fortifications, encamped 
close to the enemy, so disposed that the cavalry should attack 
on his right, where was the weakest part of the wall, while 
the foot, under his own command, should assault on the left. 

Why Gustavus chose this, the strongest place in Wallen- 
stein's line, is not certain ; but he accurately gauged it as the 
key of the position, from which, once taken, he would domi- 
nate the camp. If he ruptured the wall at any other point, 
he would not succeed in the same measure as if he forced an 
entrance on the north, where on the Burgstall lay the Alte 
Veste. From no other point could he use his artillery to 
such advantage ; from no other point could he be so sure of 
his victory. The front along the Rednitz had been con- 
demned ; the side furthest from the city was too distant as 
a tactical point; to gain a foothold on the south end gave 



356 A SUPERB ASSAULT. 

but promise of a half success. Be his reasons as they may, 
he chose this place, not doubting that his guns could be got 
up to aid in the attack. 

All day long on the 2d Gustavus was busy fortifying the 
new camp and making approaches to the formidable lines. 
While so engaged he received word from scouts and some 
prisoners that Wallenstein was on the point of retiring, and 
would leave a strong rear-guard behind in the trenches. 
The work was hurried on, and the Swedish approaches were 
got close to the camp-ditch. The news proved to be false ; 
Wallenstein was in truth moving, but it was only a change 
of quarters, from the north end further down the camp, to 
clear the ground for the coming attack ; but Gustavus stood 
to his decision for an assault next day. 

On Friday, September 3, 1632, somewhat before 10 a. m., 
the Swedish foot, who had stuck green boughs in their hats 
as a token of good cheer, were launched against the heights 
crowned by the Alte Veste. The hill was steep and rugged ; 
with great effort only could a few light guns be hauled up by 
hand and got into position ; most of them remained behind. 
It was, on the Swedish side, entirely an infantry battle. 
Practically the artillery accomplished nothing, and while the 
horse aided what it Could, it had to fight dismounted and not 
as cavalry. The Swedes advanced with the utmost enthu- 
siasm and confidence. Had they not defeated better troops 
than these at Breitenfeld? What were intrenchments to 
them, every man of whom had stormed breaches time and 
again ? The fire grew deadly. Aldringer, who commanded 
at this point, was sharply reinforced by Wallenstein with six 
infantry regiments, on whose heels came speeding almost all 
the rest of the army. Gustavus was omnipresent, leading on 
his men, putting in regiments here and companies there, and 
laboring hard to get guns up the slope. This was all-impor- 



DESPERATE FIGHTING. 357 

tant. The enemy afterwards confessed that a good battery 
at the Alte Veste would have driven them out of camp. The 
Swedes acted the part of men. Despite the grape and can- 
ister from the imperial cannon, of which there were over a 
hundred in line, and the volleys of musketry from the walls, 
so constant as to make one continuous roar, they held their 
own with utter contempt of death. Many imperial officers 
fell, Fugger among the number. The Swedes fared no bet- 
ter : scores of superior officers were killed ; every one was 
in the thick of it. Torstenson was captured ; Bernard's horse 
was shot under him ; the king's boot-sole was shot away. The 
general officers were doing their full duty. The troops were 
freely put in, and from time to time seemed to have success 
just within their grasp. To meet one desperate advance, 
Wallenstein launched one of his best cavalry regiments, the 
Kronberg, at the Swedish line, but Stalhandske's Finns 
thrust it back decimated. 

Thrice the gallant Swedish foot captured the Burgstall; 
thrice were they hustled out with grievous loss. A new line 
followed each one that lost ground. No troops ever showed 
better heart, but the Alte Veste could not be held if taken. 
They took, however, under gallant Bernard, a height facing 
the castle, and had they been able to get guns up there, they 
could have pounded the castle to pieces, and raked Wallen- 
stein* s camp. Scandinavian grit well seconded a Viking's 
courage. For twelve mortal hours the bloody work went on, 
— as Wallenstein expressed it in a letter to the emperor, 
" caldissimamente" — but the Swedes had made no real 
gain. All agree that the fighting was hot, — the Swedes said 
hotter than Breitenf eld ; the imperialists, hotter than the 
battle of the White Hill. 

At dusk a slow rain began to fall, which made the roads 
and slopes too slippery to leave any hope of success. Had 



358 HEAVY LOSSES. 

the fight been continued two hours more, said prisoners, the 
imperialists would have run out of ammunition and been com- 
pelled to retire. But Gustavus called a halt. The Swedes 
held their ground through the night, and the firing between 
the lines never ceased. Early next morning the king tried 
the chances of one more sally from the woods which he held, 
but to no effect. Wallenstein saw his advantage, and re- 
doubled the force of his counter attack. By 10 a. m. he 
pushed the Swedes out of the wood they had all along held, 
down the slope and back to Fiirth. The battle had lasted 
twenty-four hours. Many dead and wounded were left upon 
the field. The Swedish loss is variously given at from two 
thousand to four thousand killed and wounded. There is no 
official list. Wallenstein lost half as many as the Swedes. 

In this first battle between Wallenstein and Gustavus, to 
the Swede belonged the honor, to the Czech the victory. But 
not to win here was to lose ; and the king had not won. 

Though it had been the only means left to the king to 
break the deadlock, it was none the less true that the assault 
had failed, and with a heavy loss. Like all similar unsuc- 
cessful assaults, like Fredericksburg, Kenesaw, Cold Harbor, 
in our civil war, Gustavus' attack on the Alte Veste has been 
denounced as reckless and out of place. But for all that, it 
was a distinct gain to the modern art of war ; and as a first 
attempt to compass what was then deemed impossible, should 
be exempt from the blame which may sometimes be visited 
on other failures. It had at that day been usual to oper- 
ate a breach in the wall of a fortress, and then to launch 
a column perhaps many times greater in numbers than 
the entire garrison of the place to storm it, but no such 
assault was attempted unless the breach was practicable. 
It had been considered impossible to storm a fortified camp, 
not because the walls could not be breached, but because the 



GUSTAVUS JUSTIFIED. 359 

defenders were presumably as numerous as the attacking 
force. And yet it was essential that attacks on such posi- 
tions should find their place in war. Without them, the 
modern art could not be developed. Some brave soul was 
called on to prove that such an attack was feasible, and 
therefore justifiable; Gustavus' very failure demonstrated 
this ; that his men were not disheartened by the failure, they 
shortly proved by their gallantry at Liitzen ; and since the 
introduction of firearms, the king deserves credit for first 
showing the world the ability of good infantry to attack and 
hold themselves in front of strong intrenchments manned by 
equal numbers and mounted by plenty of artillery. His 
great successor, Frederick, made it plain that what Gustavus 
attempted was achievable ; and the heroic effort of the king 
and his gallant Swedes to force their way into the Alte Yeste 
was as distinct a step forward in the art of war as it was a 
splendid exploit. Defeat is not always a disgrace or loss ; 
nor is victory always a gain or glory. Had the attack on 
the Alte Veste succeeded, it would have won unstinted praise. 

Gustavus understood his failure ; with a vigorous com- 
mander in his front, he would be running a grave risk ; with 
Wallenstein he was, barring loss of men, no whit worse off. 
In a letter to the Niirnberg council he exj)lained the reason 
of his assault, acknowledged his failure, and asked care for 
the wounded and continued issues of bread, as well as six or 
seven thousand workmen to finish his intrenchments near 
Fiirth. He was determined not to leave Niirnberg so long; as 
there was any hope of success. 

Gustavus had, since his negotiations with Wallenstein in 
the fall of 1631, made several further attempts to influence 
the imperial general. In the spring of 1632 he is said to 
have approached him, and he did so again when first in 
Niirnberg. But at this time Wallenstein was in negotiation 



360 UTTER STARVATION. 

with John George, and would listen to no advances, though 
Gustavus is said to have offered to help him to the Bohemian 
crown. In July there were renewed evidences of Wallen- 
stein's willingness to work toward a peace ; and now Gusta- 
vus sent Colonel Sparre, recently captured, to Wallenstein, 
with overtures for the exchange of prisoners and incidentally 
to treat of peace. Exchanges were effected, but Wallenstein 
referred the other question to Vienna, where it was so long 
delayed that it was practically dropped. 

Gustavus worked uninterruptedly on the lurth intrench- 
ments, which he prolonged from the Rednitz above the village 
with a northerly sweep to the rear, a distance of over two 
miles. So long as there was any chance, he still hoped for 
success. Rations had grown so short that the men got bread 
but once in three or four days ; no forage could be had within 
a day's march. Yet the Swedes had open communications to 
Kitzingen and Wiirzburg, while Wallenstein had not even 
the road to Neumarkt. It was reported September 9 that he 
could not hold himself over three days more. For all that, 
Wallenstein did not budge. He sat sullenly in place. It was 
a game of patience. 

The rival armies — starving though they were — remained 
on the spot two weeks after the battle, the Swedes alone 
carrying on a small war, while Wallenstein forbade replies to 
their attacks. Hunger was now at its height, and was per- 
haps the worse in the imperial camp. Contemporary writers 
state the loss of each army to have been twenty thousand men 
in the two and a half months they lay near Nurnberg. This 
number, in the Swedish army at least, is exaggerated. In 
the city ten thousand people are said to have died. The 
cattle all perished, and the vicinity was transformed into a 
desert. 

It was evident to the king that no further advantage could 



A NOBLE CHALLENGE. 361 

be gained by remaining at Niirnberg. He could neither 
entice nor force Wallenstein out to battle ; lie could not cap- 
ture his camp. He determined to cut the knot ; either to 
reestablish himself upon his direct communications with north 
Germany, or else to go on with his operations in Swabia, 
basing on the Mainz- Wiirzburg country. He was too high- 
strung to play longer at this game. He had tried assault ; 
he had offered battle ; he had sought negotiation. All had 
failed. Wallenstein was the colder-blooded, and, in such a 
contest, the stronger. Niirnberg was left well supplied with 
men, — eight regiments of foot, numbering forty-four hundred 
men, and three hundred horse, under brave old Kniphausen ; 
while Oxenstiern was to remain in the city to represent the 
king. 

Having done this, Gustavus sent Wallenstein, on September 
17, a formal challenge to come out to battle on the next 
day ; at the appointed hour he drew up the entire army and 
marched past the imperial camp, stopping on the way to can- 
nonade it. But Wallenstein would not be tempted ; he did 
not even answer the defiance. 

There is a touch of pathetic gallantry in Gustavus' act, 
which appeals to the heart of every man who has ever felt the 
intoxication of battle ; there is a touch of sullen grandeur in 
the refusal of the challenge by the proud Czech, who would 
not be moved by any taunt. The veteran salutes with a thrill 
of enthusiasm the manes of the noble Swede ; he cannot rev- 
erence the memory of his foeman. 

Failing in every effort to obtain an advantage over Wal- 
lenstein, Gustavus concluded to leave the field ; he broke 
camp and marched unchallenged past Wallenstein's intrench- 
ments towards Wiirzburg. His first camp was at Langen- 
zenn ; the next at Weinsheim ; he then marched to Neustadt, 
whence he started September 23 for Windsheim. The army 



362 WALLENSTEIN WINS. 

with detachments had shrunk to about twenty-four thousand 
men. 

Here occurred a curious episode. An embassy from Tar- 
tary reached the king, to see the Wonder of the North, and 
to congratulate him on his splendid achievements. The time 
was less appropriate than after Breitenfeld or Eain. 

Wallenstein, who had watched this proceeding without 
apparent interest, now waited until the 22d, when Gustavus 
had reached Neustadt. As there was no further danger of 
an ambush, after burning his camp and the inclosed hamlets, 
and leaving a vast number of sick and wounded behind and a 
quantity of baggage, he also broke up, and passing almost 
under the walls of Niirnberg, moved, September 23, through 
Fiirth and Bruck to Forscheim, burning all the villages near 
Niirnberg. The indignant garrison sallied out, and inflicted 
considerable loss on Wallenstein's rear-guard. 

The imperial general had won, — won by standing famine 
three days longer than the Swedes, and by refusing every 
offer of battle. What he had won it is difficult to say. He 
had come to Niirnberg to capture the city ; he had followed 
Gustavus presumably to beat him in battle. But he had 
conducted solely a campaign of depletion. Each army had 
lost thrice the lives a battle would have consumed ; no sub- 
stantial advantage had been gained except by Gustavus in 
the safety of Niirnberg. Each leader again took to manoeu- 
vring. Arrived in Forscheim, Wallenstein also could muster 
a bare twenty-four thousand men. 

The reasons Wallenstein gave the emperor for not follow- 
ing up Gustavus in what he was pleased to call his retreat 
after a lost battle were that he could not quickly collect, nor 
did he wish to tire out, his cavalry, which was dispersed about 
the country to forage ; that Gustavus held all the passes and 
could head him off at every point ; and that he preferred not 



GUSTAVUS THE MORE SOLDIERLY. 



363 



to risk the gain he had already made. Gustavus had no 
excuses to offer. " I attacked the enemy's intrenchments and 
was beaten back," said he; "but could I have had him in 
the open field, I would have shown another result." He 
proved his words good at Liitzen. 

Statesmen may differ as to who had shown himself the 
greater man ; but the fame of the captain may safely be left 
with the soldiers of all generations. 




Gustavus Adolphus. 

From bust modeled in 1632, at Augsburg (considered the best 
portrait of the king at the time of his death). 



XXVIII. 

SPARRING. SEPTEMBER, 1632. 

After the breaking of the Niirnberg deadlock, Gustavus imagined that 
Wallenstein would head for Saxony to resume operations ; and he sought 
to so manoeuvre as to tempt him away. The Saxon army under Arnim, with 
some Swedes, was in Silesia, where it had pushed the enemy well up the Oder. 
In September Wallenstein's lieutenants invaded Saxony from south and east, 
and devastated the region. But uncertain what Wallenstein would do, Gusta- 
vus marched back to Swabia and resumed his operations, hoping that a threat 
to move down the Danube would forestall the Saxon campaign. An insurrec- 
tion in Upper Austria offered an opening, and Gustavus believed that John 
George could hold head for a while against Wallenstein. Oxenstiern strongly 
favored this plan; but Gustavus eventually chose to reduce Swabia. While 
proceeding with this work he ascertained that Wallenstein, paying no heed to 
the Danube, was steadily marching on Saxony, the one weak spot in the Swed- 
ish armor. This he must meet. Meanwhile the operations on the Weser and 
near Gustavus' bastion were progressing, on the whole in favor of the Swedes, 
though Pappenheim had been active and intelligent ; but finally the bulk of 
all these forces was ordered to Saxony, where the great struggle promised to 
occur. The instability of John George had again resulted in bringing war 
within his own borders. 

Wallenstein advanced to Bamberg, took it, sent detach- 
ments to the most important neighboring towns, and detailed 
Gallas with a small corps towards Saxony. His intention 
was clear. He would now compel John George to bend to 
the imperial will, as he was on the point of doing when inter- 
rupted by the presence of Gustavus at Weiden and by his 
march to Niirnberg. 

When Wallenstein followed Gustavus to Niirnberg the 
king had utilized some of the Saxon troops, thus become 



GUSTAVUS RESUMES HIS WORK. 365 

available, while the bulk under Arnim, with the Pomeranian 
and Brandenburg armies, held Lusatia and Silesia. 

Shortly after Saxony had sent some regiments to Gustavus 
— thus convincing him of John George's loyalty — Holcke 
had marched from the Niirnberg country on that state, and 
by the beginning of September, devastating unmercifully, 
he reached the vicinity of Dresden. In the beginning of 
October Gallas joined him near Freiburg, which they took 
as well as Meissen. Here the Saxons defended the river, 
and the imperialists marched on Oschatz, keeping up their 
devastations in a manner as systematic as it was fiendish. 
The result of John George's vacillation was to make his 
country again the battle-field. Had he heartily joined with 
his brother Protestants, Saxony would have been spared most 
of the ills she suffered at the hands of the emperor's armies. 

On September 26, at Windsheim, the king ascertained 
Wallenstein's retirement from Niirnberg, but he learned none 
of the details, nor whether the elector had separated from 
him. If, by his hesitation opposite Wallenstein at Eger, the 
king had prejudiced his initiative, here was a chance to 
regain it ; but he had barely sufficient information on which 
to act. He might leave a part of his forces in Thuringia, to 
be ready to march to the aid of Saxony if threatened ; with 
the rest, resume the conquest of Swabia, and from there push 
down the Danube on the emperor's hereditary possessions. 
Or he might send a slender column to Swabia, and march 
with the bulk of his force against Wallenstein, who, he 
already guessed, was bound for Saxony. Frederick or Napo- 
leon would have done the latter; but Gustavus reasoned 
otherwise ; he could not desert his friends along the Danube. 
Battle-eager as he was, his feeling for method in what he did 
was the stronger instinct. 

Gustavus had learned that Wallenstein would not necessa- 



366 A PROPOSED FORAY. 

rily follow his lead, — the Czech cared not for the devastation 
of Bavaria or Austria, provided he personally suffered not, 
— and by marching down the Danube, it was not certain that 
the imperial commander would be induced to give up his own 
designs. It might mean to leave Saxony to her fate, should 
he go far from the Main. Still, he believed that John George 
would have force enough, with his own army and a small 
Swedish contingent, to hold head against Wallenstein, who 
during the approaching winter season would not be excep- 
tionally active, and he began work on a broader scheme. A 
rebellion of the peasantry had long been brewing in the 
Austrian provinces, where Protestantism had been put down 
with much cruelty ; and it was still a question whether a 
march down the Danube to their aid might not give the 
imperialists enough to think about at home to prevent Wal- 
lenstein from pushing his offensive. These provinces were 
already on the verge of an uprising, and had sent messages 
begging for aid, which Gustavus had indeed promised. He 
proposed to leave, out of his royal army, five thousand foot 
and two thousand horse on the Main, and to head seven 
thousand foot and forty-three hundred horse on the foray 
named. 

Oxenstiern, though far more cautious than the king, was 
warmly in favor of the plan, as he had been, after Breiten- 
feld, of a march on Vienna. He believed that Wallenstein 
and Maximilian could not refrain from flying to the succor of 
these threatened lands, from which they drew their supply 
of recruits, and which should be protected at any sacrifice. 

Gustavus finally declined the plan, and curiously chose 
instead an operation towards the Lake of Constance, in order 
to reduce the country at the headwaters of the Rhine and 
Danube. This does not strike the modern soldier as a wise 
manoeuvre, though it was much in Gustavus' style, whose 



AN EXAMPLE. 367 

general scheme always included the possession of all lands 
from the point of entrance to some natural boundary. Post- 
poning the Danube matter, he left Bernard in command of 
eight thousand men in the Schweinf urt country to watch the 
iniperial army, prevent a raid into Franconia, and in case 
it started towards Saxony, to move north and protect John 
George. Ruthven, with ten thousand men, was left on the 
Danube and Lech to control Bavaria. Baudissin, with the 
Rhine and Hesse troops, continued to watch Pappenheim 
along the Weser. Duke George of Liineburg was to guard 
Brunswick and the lower Saxon Circle. Oxenstiern was sent 
from Niirnberg to lower Saxony to administer that territory, 
which had fallen into bad repair. 

On the way back to Windsheim from Niirnberg, whither 
he had gone to discuss plans with Oxenstiern, Gustavus 
inspected the wrecked imperial camp, where so many of his 
men had bravely sacrificed themselves ; and on October 1 he 
broke up from Windsheim and marched south by way of 
Dinkelsbiihl, Nordlingen and Donauworth (October 3, 4 
and 5), where he crossed the Danube to the relief of Rain, 
which the Bavarians were besieging. On arrival, he found 
that the Swedish commander, Colonel Mitschefal, had sur- 
rendered the place the day before, with the Swedish army 
right at hand. Of this act of cowardice Gustavus made 
an example : Mitschefal was tried and executed. The king- 
made preparations to recapture Rain, for its possession by 
the enemy cut him off from Augsburg. He marched up the 
Lech, across at Biberbach, and down to Rain. The capitula- 
tion of the town brushed away what the king would have felt 
was a threat to the communications between Bavaria, Swabia 
and the Main. 

Ready to continue his march towards the Lake of Con- 
stance, Gustavus heard from Oxenstiern that Wallenstein 



368 THE RHINE CAMPAIGN. 

had marched to Bamberg, and from Baudissin that Pappen- 
heim was threatening Hesse. He delayed action for further 
news. Should Wallenstein move on Bernard and join Pap- 
penheim, he instructed Bernard to hold the fords of the 
Main and withdraw to B,othemburg or Nordlingen, where 
Gustavus would meet him and move promptly on the enemy. 
Should Pappenheim march on Pranconia, Bernard was to 
stay on the Main and throw him back. Should Wallenstein 
move on Saxony, there was at this season not much danger 
to anticipate, providing John George remained true to his 
compact. Should Wallenstein seek to winter in Franconia, 
Gustavus would continue on to the uplands. He was again 
pushing his initiative ; Wallenstein's campaign so far had 
only checked the Swedish programme ; in reality nothing 
had been lost. The summer's operations had interrupted, not 
discontinued, Gustavus' general plan. He still hoped to 
draw Wallenstein south and get at him in the open; or at 
least to sever Maximilian from him, and reduce to the lowest 
point his capacity to harm Saxony. 

Meanwhile Horn, on the Rhine, had captured Coblenz, 
Strasburg and other places, and had driven the Spanish and 
Lorraine forces out of Germany. The king instructed him 
to clean the Lower Palatinate, while the rhinegrave drove the 
imperialists out of Alsatia. Benfeld, Schlettstadt, Tiirkheim, 
Colmar were occupied, Frankenthal captured, and Heidelberg 
blockaded. In the bastion country, Pappenheim and Tott 
were equally matched, but the Swedes had got possession of 
the Bremen archbishopric. 

Wallenstein paid no heed to Gustavus' operations. He 
remained for a while near Bamberg, quartered his troops for 
their needed rest over a large area, collected food, and levied 
contributions to pay his troops. Bernard prevented his taking 
Schweinfurt, and beset the passes of the Thiiringerwald to 



OPERATIONS ON WESER. 369 

keep hini from Erfurt. Wallenstein finally broke up, marched 
on and took Coburg, — Taupadel held out in the fort, — pur- 
posing to move through the Forest to attack Saxony from the 
west. But hearing that Bernard from Schweinfurt, by a 
march on Hildburghausen and Schleusingen, was threatening 
his flank, and unwilling to encounter even his small force, he 
changed his plan, marched by way of Cronach and Hof, on 
October 20 reached Plauen, and at Altenburg joined Gallas 
and Holcke. At Coburg Maximilian withdrew his eight 
thousand men, leaving Wallenstein sixteen thousand, and, 
glad to quit the haughty duke of Friedland, returned to save 
his possessions. At Ratisbon he was joined by six thousand 
troops raised by the Spaniards in Italy. 

Ordering Pappenheim to join him in Franconia or Saxony, 
Wallenstein from Altenburg advanced on Leipsic. While 
Gustavus was hoping to draw him away from John George, 
the Czech had remorselessly marched on this ally. In 
strategic manoeuvring and persistency of purpose, Gustavus 
had met his match. 

A page may well be devoted to the operations on the Weser. 

Since his separation from Tilly, Pappenheim had been con- 
ducting an active campaign in Westphalia and the lower 
Saxon Circle. Early in 1632 Mansfeld had been besieged 
in Magdeburg by Baner, and was on the point of capitula- 
tion when Pappenheim suddenly appeared, and by a coup de 
main relieved him. Gustavus, then in the Main region, 
debated a march to the assistance of Baner, but it was quite 
too late. Baner joined Duke William in January, and Pap- 
penheim retired across the Weser. When the king called these 
forces to the south, Pappenheim recrossed the Weser and fell 
on the corps of Kagg, who alone was left behind, and pushed 
him back to Hildesheim. Landgrave William was compelled 
to retire to Cassel. 



370 BAUDISSIN VICE TOTT. 

In January Tott had finally captured Wismar, had crossed 
the Elbe at Dbmitz, and had sat down to besiege Stade at 
its mouth. Tott had formerly done efficient work, but he 
now appeared to lose his energy. He needed the immediate 
control of the king. Repeatedly instructed to join Kagg 
and the landgrave, on one pretense or other he neglected to 
do so, and remained in the Bremen territory, the government 
of which drifted into the worst condition. Kagg's command 
sank into an equally low state, and frequent serious com- 
plaints reached the king's ears. Ready to utilize the situa- 
tion, Pappenheim marched against Tott, who continued lazily 
to blockade Stade. 

To replace Tott Gustavus sent Baudissin, who, less strong 
than Pappenheim, at all events went to work ; and his first 
attempt was to hem his enemy in the Bremen peninsula, and 
cut him off from the Weser. Pappenheim was skillful enough 
to disconcert this plan, and while Baudissin joined Duke 
George in June at Hildesheim, Pappenheim prevented the 
landgrave from meeting his allies by a threat to his territory. 
From Hesse Pappenheim moved towards Hildesheim, and 
July 8 captured the Moritzburg, but withdrew without battle 
and across the Weser and Rhine to Maestricht, heedless of 
the orders of Maximilian to march on Niirnberg, where he 
was much needed. 

Gustavus equally needed Duke George at Niirnberg, but 
for fear of Pappenheim he only drew some troops from him, 
and left him to sustain Baudissin. The latter, in August, 
marched across the Weser with eight thousand men into 
Westphalia, to hold head against Pappenheim's forces left 
there under Gronfeld, and Duke George undertook the siege 
of Wolfenbiittel. Both were succeeding well when Pappen- 
heim reappeared on the scene, forced Baudissin back, slightly 
defeated him at Brakel, and crossed the Weser at Hbxter, in 



SITUATION IN GERMANY. 871 

the teeth of the Swede, who retired to Hesse. He then cap- 
tured Hildesheim, October 9, and thus had open to hirn the 
whole country as far as the Elbe. 

This was the moment when Maradas was threatening and 
Holcke and Gallas were invading Saxony, and Wallenstein 
was at Coburg. John George called on Liineburg to come 
to his aid ; and already in retreat before Pappenheim, he 
made haste to do so, marching towards Wittenburg and 
Torgau. 

The situation in Germany had undergone a remarkable 
change during the past year. The Swedish bastion, from 
Danzig to Hamburg, remained substantially the same. The 
line of the Warta was still held, with Frankfort as an 
advanced work, and outposts in Silesia. The entire country 
between the Elbe and the Weser was practically in the hands 
of the Protestants ; for though Pappenheim, while manoeuvring 
on the Weser, had kept that region in constant turmoil, now 
that he had moved to Saxony, Baudissin, utilizing his absence, 
overran Berg and Cologne, and, capturing almost all the 
cities, again compelled the bishop elector of Cologne to neu- 
trality. Thuringia and the entire Main country were firmly 
held by the Swedes. Horn, as we have seen, had conquered 
Alsatia, and driven the Spaniards from the Lower Palatinate. 
Wiirtemberg ar^ Swabia were occupied by the Swedes, and 
there was only Maximilian — a weak opponent — in the way 
of tht3 march of a strong and well-led column down the 
Danubt to Vienna. 

But there was a weak spot in the king of Sweden's harness, 
and Wallenstein had thrust straight at it. Saxony was the 
one uncertain element, and though formally in alliance with 
Gustavus, and bound to him by every tie of gratitude and honor, 
now, at the critical moment, — when to keep faith meant 
certain Protestant success, to break faith meant almost as cer- 



372 JOHN GEORGE FAITHLESS. 

tain failure, — the elector violated all his pledges. The 
emperor had failed in the policy of conciliation, which Wal- 
lenstein had so dubiously carried out with fair words coupled 
to fire and sword, and it had been concluded between them 
to resume the old system of coercion. Moving in June from 
Silesia into Lusatia, Maradas had as usual destroyed in the 
most cold-blooded manner every hamlet along the route. 
Arnim marched to meet this threat, a corps of Swedes 
from the Oder joined him, and the imperial army retired to 
the upper Oder, and from there back to the borders of Hun- 
gary, leaving the Saxons to reconquer and hold all Silesia. 
But while Arnim was thus winning an apparent success, he 
was at a distance, and the two other columns of imperialists 
sent by Wallenstein under Gallas and Holcke moved into 
Saxony and took possession of the whole electorate west of 
the Elbe. This should have drawn the Saxon army back 
from Silesia, but it did not. Saxon indecision was again, 
as at Breitenfeld, the cause of a vast change in the Swedish 
plan of campaign, and her soil became, as it was but just it 
should, the theatre of conflict. 




A Burgimdian. 
(loth Century.) 



XXIX. 

BACK TO SAXONY. OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER, 1632. 

The struggle for initiative between Gustavus and Wallenstein had been 
about even. Tbe king had drawn Wallenstein from Saxony to Niirnberg, but 
Wallenstein had now resumed his work there, ordering Pappenheim to join him. 
Nearing Leipsie with threats to level it unless surrendered, he took it, and 
sat down to await events and ravage the land. Tbe uncertain attitude of 
Saxony and Brandenburg, and the questionable bearing of the greater powers 
with regard to further Swedish conquests, warned the king to look well to his 
bastion. Anxiety as to what John George might do, despite his treaty, deter- 
mined him to march to Saxony. Leaving a sufficient force in Swabia and on 
the Main, he headed for Erfurt, joined Bernard November 2, thence pushed 
on, and November 9 crossed the Saale, whose fords he had been wise enough to 
seize. Writing to the elector to send him what troops he could, he reconnoi- 
tred in his front at Naumburg. Arnim would not return from Silesia, and the 
elector sent Gustavus no assistance. Wallenstein was uncertain what to do. 
Not believing that Gustavus would attack him, he dispersed his forces, send- 
ing Pappenheim to Halle ; but when he saw that the king meant to fight, he 
quickly ordered him back. Gustavus would have liked to join the Saxons 
before engaging, but aware that Pappenheim was away, he decided on battle as 
he was. 

For some months there had been a measuring of moral 
strength between Gustavus and Wallenstein, and so far there 
had been no great advantage on the side of either, though 
from a military aspect distinctly greater ability and charac- 
ter had been exhibited by the king. Wallenstein's threat 
to Saxony had drawn Gustavus away from work he had 
undertaken in Bavaria; Gustavus' threat on Eger and his 
taking position at Niirnberg had drawn Wallenstein from 
work he had begun in Saxony. In the operations around 
Niirnberg, the initiative had all come from Gustavus, as it 



374 WALLENSTEIN A GREAT MAN. 

had prior to his leaving Munich ; Wallenstein had con- 
stantly declined the gage of battle. It was Gustavus' move- 
ment which broke up the deadlock, though he had failed in his 
assault on the Arte Veste. Then Gustavus resumed the lead ; 
but Wallenstein, with a persistency which does him vast 
credit, paid no heed to the king's threat against the Austrian 
possessions, leisurely marched on Saxony, and resumed his 
efforts to drive John George back into the imperial fold. 
His movement was designed to draw the king away from the 
Danube by seriously threatening his communications. It was 
a question as to who should yield to the other ; and in this 
case Wallenstein's utter disregard of misfortune which did 
not personally affect himself stood him in good stead ; while 
Gustavus' loyalty to Saxony weakened his strategic purpose. 
There is no denying Wallenstein the title of a great man ; 
nor can large military ability be gainsaid him, despite his 
utter lack of the true soldier's audacity. He is the only gen- 
eral Gustavus ever met who was a foeman worthy of his steel, 
who on more than one occasion compelled the Swede to 
change his own manoeuvres to follow those of his opponent. 
This was largely due to the complex political conditions 
enlacing the Swedish problem, while the Czech was practi- 
cally untrammeled ; but it was in part due to Wallenstein's 
strong character and indisputable if unadventurous military 
skill. A touch of the divine spark would have made Wallen- 
stein truly great ; and were not so many vices and so much 
human suffering to be laid at his door, he would almost stand 
unsurpassed in the history of his times. 

Wallenstein's general plan was not to surround Saxony, 
but to concentrate his forces so as to meet Giistavus, who, 
about the end of October, he learned was already on the 
march towards him. From Coburg he ordered Pappenheim 
to march on Leipsic or Merseburg, and to seize Torgau or 



LEIPSIC CAPTURED. 375 

some other Elbe crossing; and, impatient at his slowness, 
reprimanded him for conducting war on his own score instead 
of obeying orders. But Wallenstein was in error. Pappen- 
heim had grasped the necessity of joining his chief, and was 
already aiming for Erfurt via Muhlhausen and Langensalza ; 
and when he heard that Gustavus had reached Erfurt, he 
turned aside past Buttstadt towards Merseburg, there crossed 
the Saale and reported. The imperial armies went into camp 
at Weissenfels. 

With threats like those of Tilly a year before, Wallenstein 
marched against Leipsic, and was met by a similar refusal. 
The commandant of the Pleissenburg, or inner fortress, was 
on two successive days called on to surrender, but he gal- 
lantly refused. Early on October 31 Holcke advanced on the 
■city, -captured the suburbs despite a heavy fire, and began to 
bombard it. A third demand was refused, as was a fourth, 
which threatened not to leave man or dog alive in the place. 
Then Wallenstein opened his batteries. The town, well 
aware that it could not make a prolonged resistance, finally 
gave in, and received favorable conditions; and two days 
later the Pleissenburg did the like. 

Wallenstein's light troops now raided the entire country 
between the Saale and the Elbe, and even beyond. Neu- 
stadt, Kahla and Saalfeld were taken ; the peasantry sought 
refuge wherever they could, — in Erfurt, Wittenberg and 
Magdeburg. Torgau, Weissenfels, Merseburg, Naumburg, 
surrendered ; Halle was occupied, but the fortress held out. 

Gustavus had learned that Wallenstein had left Bamberg, 
and was marching north towards Coburg. Oxenstiern was 
anxious to have him disregard this manoeuvre, and continue 
his own scheme. The king and the chancellor both believed 
that the forces in and about Saxony sufficed for her to hold 
her own; that Wallenstein would not quietly permit the 



376 SHOULD GUSTAVUS AID SAXONY? 

devastation of the emperor's hereditary possessions ; that, 
having once drawn Wallenstein away from Saxony, it could 
be done again by vigorous measures on the Danube. If the 
Main and Saxon armies held the fortresses, — such as Mag- 
deburg, Wittenberg and Dresden, Frankfort, Wiirzburg and 
Schweinfurt, — and stood on a strict defensive, Wallen- 
stein would be able to do no permanent damage to the cause ; 
he would probably not conduct larger operations ; while Gus- 
tavus could all but destroy Bavaria and the entire Danube 
country. If Saxony suffered, it would be her own fault. 

This was sound military reasoning ; it had been Gustavus' 
own idea ; but he had promised John George to come to his 
assistance at just such a juncture as this. He had striven to 
save Magdeburg ; he had saved Niirnberg ; should he do 
less for Saxony ? Moreover, he feared for his bastion ; he 
knew that Wallenstein was his equal in persistent manoeu- 
vring, if not in battle ; and, what was worse, the European 
powers were beginning to look on Gustavus' cause as the 
losing one. His star was, they feared, declining. 

The latter was an element of the utmost gravity. The 
Netherlander had never been warmly interested in the 
Swedes, — commercial relations forbade it ; should a peace 
be made by the king with Spain, their position would be still 
less friendly. France stood in a questionable attitude, despite 
Gustavus' help in securing for Louis the control of the left 
bank of the Rhine, and the payment of the subsidies agreed 
on at Barwalde stood in danger. Denmark had never been 
frank in her peaceful declarations, and, now that she had lost 
control of the Baltic, was ripe for any anti-Swedish plot ; 
indeed, rumors came that such negotiations were on foot. 
England ought surely to be Gustavus' ally; but relations 
with her were strained, and all attempts to patch up a rea- 
sonable treaty had failed. Frederick had not yet been 



GUSTAVUS STARTS NORTH. 377 

restored to the Palatinate, though Gustavus certainly intended 
that he should be, and this was a further cause for English 
grumbling. The brilliant successes of Gustavus where all 
others had failed had begun by provoking universal jealousy, 
and had been followed by apprehension of his downfall and 
of what might prove to be its result. These puzzling political 
conditions weighed sorely on Gustavus, and it was they rather 
than the military situation which led him to his action. 
With the aid of his old allies, or at least their ingenuous 
neutrality, he felt himself quite abreast of the situation. 
But with less than this, he was too good a soldier to risk 
what he had won at so vast a cost. His letters at this time 
show what he considered his problem to be. 

His first duty was to put Saxony beyond question on such 
a basis as once more to be the outwork of his Baltic bastion. 
He had not quite lost hope of personally controlling Wallen- 
stein ; failing which, he had faith that he could beat him in 
battle. Alive with this feeling, he left Pfalzgraf Christian 
with four brigades and three thousand cavalry, to contain 
Maximilian, so that he might not again join Wallenstein ; 
put necessary garrisons along the Danube, — Donauworth, 
Rain, Augsburg and other places, — and on October 18 
started for Erfurt. He ordered Duke William and Baudis- 
sin thither with all their troops and at all hazards. Bernard 
was to join him on the march ; should Maximilian have 
passed Niirnberg on his way south, he purposed to take along 
Kniphausen too. 

Passing Donauworth, the column reached Nordlingen Octo- 
ber 20, and Rothemburg (via Dinkelsbiihl) October 27. On 
the 22d, with an escort of seven hundred cavalry, Gustavus 
went ahead to Niirnberg, to consult with Oxenstiern. The 
chancellor was to remain in south Germany, with headquar- 
ters in Ulm, and, as a general scheme, was to convene all the 



378 



THE MARCH TO SAXONY. 



Circles having the good of Protestantism at heart, and join 
their fighting and victualing powers, to sustain the king and 
oppose the emperor. In this interview Gustavus, as if in 
anticipation of his early death, gave Oxenstiern all necessary 
instructions as to the government of Sweden during the 
minority of his daughter Christina. 

From Eothemburg the army marched via Kitzingen to 
Schweinfurt and Schleusingen. Decamping from here No- 







Region near Liitzen. 



vember 1, the Thuringian Forest was passed at night; and 
at Arnstadt, November 2, Gustavus joined Bernard, who had 
wisely crossed the mountains to head off Pappenheim from 
Erfurt and Weimar. The troops needed rest, and two days 
were given them at Arnstadt, whence, November 5, they 
marched to Erfurt, and remained in camp several days. 

Breaking up from Erfurt, the king, eager for battle, headed 
the army for Buttstadt, which Pappenheim had recently 
passed ; and Colonel Brandenstein was wisely sent forward 



INSTRUCTIONS TO JOHN GEORGE. 379 

through Kosen defile to Naumburg, which he took. In the 
presence of the enemy the army was ployed into battle col- 
umns and the country suitably patrolled. The enemy's light 
troops fell back along the Saale, and on November 8 Kosen 
was occupied in force, which, unless held, might compel the 
army to make a long detour to cross the Saale. In that day, 
the defile was of great importance. To-day, the country has 
many roads. 

At early morning on November 9 Gustavus crossed the 
Saale at the Altenburg ford with the Swedish cavalry ; the 
foot crossed at Kosen. At noon the whole army passed 
Naumburg, and occupying a camp in front of the Jacob's 
gate, proceeded to throw up works. The king's intention 
was to do here what he had done at Niirnberg : intrench a 
camp, wait for the Saxon army, and then force battle on 
Wallenstein. 

Constantly in touch with John George, Gustavus had unin- 
terruptedly advised him of the situation ; he had too much 
at stake in the loyalty of Saxony to neglect these negotia- 
tions ; and he had kept the elector well posted as to what 
troops would be in his vicinity and ready to lend a hand in 
case of attack. On starting north, he begged John George 
to draw his troops together so as to join the Swedish army ; 
to occupy all defiles and strong places with large detach- 
ments ; to cut off victual from Wallenstein ; and not to be 
frightened by the reputed strength of the enemy, whose actual 
strength had been depleted numerically and morally. From 
Arnstadt he wrote again, asking for at least three thousand 
horse to be sent to Naumburg. From Naumburg he conjured 
the elector to send all available forces to the Saale, first of 
all those of Duke George ; to hurry forward the cavalry, and 
let the foot, artillery and baggage come by the safest road, — 
perhaps via Mansfeld. There was no time to bring troops 



380 ARNIM'S TREACHERY. 

from afar ; the immediate work must be done with those at 
hand ; though, indeed, Arnim should be ordered in from Sile- 
sia. A small cavalry force, said the king, should be sent to 
Wittenberg and scout out towards Halle to clear the country. 
He jurged John George to rouse the entire population, and 
order the peasantry to carry on a small war against the 
invaders. He had come to save Saxony ; but Saxony must 
put her own shoulder to the wheel. He himself was waiting 
only to learn the enemy's whereabouts and intentions. Above 
all he urged an immediate junction of the Saxon with the 
Swedish army. 

Duke George was sent orders to break up from Torgau and 
Wittenberg, and to join the king as quickly as possible with 
the cavalry. 

Arnim, despite orders to return, was prolonging his stay in 
Silesia, while the imperialists had concentrated in the Leipsic 
region. He finally in person visited Dresden, November 5, 
but still foolishly urged that the place for the Saxon army 
was Silesia; and after making a flimsy inspection of the 
Liineburg troops, he again left, insisting that he could at best 
spare a couple of regiments for Saxony. And he managed to 
convince the elector that he was right. 

John George was conducting a political, not a military cam- 
paign. He again took to petty discussions of trivial points, 
while the enemy was within his dominions, and was prevented 
from desolating them by the sole presence of Gustavus. 
With every desire, he said, of sending troops, the bulk of the 
army was in Silesia, and that on hand was essential to protect 
the fortresses and the crossings of the Elbe. To exhibit his 
good-will, however, he would send two regiments, a force of 
about fifteen hundred cavalry, which should join Duke George 
and with him march to the Swedish army. John George had 
by solemn treaty agreed to give Gustavus the control of his 



ADVANCE TO BATTLE. 381 

entire army; the king had forsaken his own plans on the 
Danube to fly to the aid of his ally, and now John George 
offered him a paltry fifteen hundred men ! Even this force 
came too late. 

By November 14 Gustavus had substantially ascertained 
the situation of the imperialists. There were but two of his 
trusted generals with him, Bernard and old Kniphausen, in 
which latter officer, brave though not always lucky, Gustavus 
reposed much confidence. As was natural, Bernard advised 
fighting, — and this was the mood of the king. Kniphausen 
advised waiting for the Saxon and Liineburg reinforcements, 
the weight of which advice Gustavus recognized. But to 
delay for these meant to permit Wallenstein to collect his own 
forces, which Gustavus learned were much scattered. Before 
the Saxons, Hessians and Liineburgers could arrive, Pappen- 
heim would be back, said the king, and his desire was to fight 
before this took place. The enemy was never so weak as 
when unexpectedly attacked, and Wallenstein seemed to be 
undecided what to do. " I, your king and leader, will go 
ahead and show every one the path of honor." Gustavus 
decided to. advance on the morrow and fight. 

Wallenstein had taken measures to have his outlying armies 
join him. Aldringer had been ordered away from Maxi- 
milian ; Gallas had been called in, but the imperial com- 
mander did not anticipate an immediate challenge. It was 
suggested by Pappenheim to make a raid on Erfurt, but as 
Bernard had already joined the king, this was a useless oper- 
ation. The generalissimo sent detachments to Naumburg, 
hoping to be able to occupy the defile at Kosen, and the pas- 
sages of the Saale, but these detachments came too late ; 
Gustavus had anticipated him. 

While Gustavus was straining every nerve for battle, Wal- 
lenstein acted with indecision. He called a council of 



382 TWO COUNCILS OF WAR. 

war. This light-headed body advised against an attack on 
the Swedish camp as dangerous ; counseled going into winter- 
quarters, which they alleged would oblige the king to do the 
same ; to send a corps to Westphalia and the Rhine against 
Baudissin, to prevent the inroads and growth in importance of 
the Protestants in that section ; and to quarter over a limited 
area so as easily to concentrate. This lamentable counsel 
Wallenstein was weak enough to accept. There is perhaps 
no better measure of the two men than the manner in which 
Gustavus dominated his council of war and decided for attack, 
and the manner in which Wallenstein listened to the trivial 
decision of his. Yet both commanders were equal autocrats, 
and, in a certain sense, of equal strength. 

In pursuance of the advice of the imperial council, Pappen- 
heim was kept till some other troops came to hand, and was 
then sent to Halle, with orders to hold this town, or if advis- 
able, to send a couple of regiments to Cologne, and free 
it from the threat of Count Berg, whom Baudissin had 
dispatched thither. Leaving a garrison under Colloredo in 
the castle of Weissenfels, and sending detachments southerly 
towards Altenburg and Zwickau to observe the Swedes and 
keep the Saxons from joining them, Wallenstein retired, 
November 14, with his entire force towards Merseburg, to 
take up quarters between the Saale and the Flossgraben, so 
as to be near both Halle and Leipsic. He smelled not the 
battle afar off. 

Wallenstein's strategic situation was remarkably good ; he 
had blundered into it unawares ; if he recognized he did not 
utilize it. His army lay in the midst of the three allied 
bodies : the Swedes at Naumburg ; the Saxons at Torgau ; 
and the force from the lower Saxon Circle with the Bruns- 
wick-Liineburgers, who were marching from Wittenberg up 
the Elbe. Taken together, these forces exceeded Wallen- 



WALLENSTEIN'S CHANCE. 383 

stein's, but singly he was largely superior to any one of them. 
Here was his chance to fall on and destroy either of the three, 
before they should concentrate. He might take the Swedish 
army first, as the most dangerous, or he might lop off the 
Wittenberg column and by so much reduce his enemy's 
strength. No doubt the Saxons intrenched at Torgau and 
Gustavus in camp at Naumburg were better able to hold their 
own, even against odds. But Wallenstein's laxness now 
appeared as marked as his former persistency. He was at 
best not inclined to do battle, when he could accomplish his 
end by any other means. He harbored a dread of the king, 
despite his success at the Alte Veste ; and he again adopted 
the strictly defensive role. 

On the other hand, the decisiveness and energy of Gustavus 
grew as he advanced. The speed with which he had marched 
from Bavaria — Donauwbrth to Naumburg in eighteen days 
— had enabled him to anticipate Wallenstein at the crossing 
of the Saale, as well as to prevent him from imposing on the 
fears of the elector. Determined to come at once to battle, 
the king was about to march on Grimma, via Pegau, to unite 
with the Saxons ; but when he heard, November 15, of Wal- 
lenstein's retrograde movement on Merseburg, he followed 
him instead, giving up his original intention of intrenching 
a camp at Naumburg. He would wait, he thought, until he 
had concentrated his forces and advanced somewhat farther. 

Divining the king's intention, when Colloredo, from the 
castle of Weissenfels, saw the heads of the Swedish columns 
and fired the three guns agreed on as a signal, Wallenstein 
called a new council of war, and under its advice again under- 
took to bar the road to Leipsic to the Swedes, and thus prevent 
the junction with the Saxons which he believed Gustavus was 
aiming to make. He ordered Pappenheim, who was besieging 
the Moritzburg at Halle, to return, to drop everything else, 



384 BOTH PREPARE FOR BATTLE. 

and hurry back by forced marches, — a thing he should have 
done without waiting for the council. " Let nothing prevent 
your being with me early to-morrow (November 16) with all 
your forces," wrote the general, anxious not to fight without 
his fiery lieutenant to uphold his hands. In consequence of 
this manoeuvre, Wallenstein found the bulk of his army at 
Liitzen on the 15th, and from here he sent out parties to scour 
the country. In his front were the fords of the Rippach, held 
by Isolani's Croat cavalry outposts. As Gustavus advanced 
to Kippach and Poserna, he met these detachments, which 
disputed the passage ; but they were brushed aside, and late 
on November 15 the Swedes crossed the stream. Gustavus 
spent some hours in reconnoitring the ground in his front. 

It is a question whether the line of the Rippach itself 
would not have been a stronger defensive line for the impe- 
rialists. But Wallenstein had given his cavalry no clear 
instructions to hold the passage, nor had he arranged to sus- 
tain the outposts with any vigor, and the latter withdrew on 
the approach of the Swedes. Darkness prevented pursuit. 
Between the Rippach, the Saale and Liitzen — the exact 
spot is not known — the Swedes lay on their arms in line of 
battle. 

It is impossible to do more than guess at the force of the 
two armies which were to wrestle for the mastery on the 
morrow. For the Swedes the data vary between fifteen and 
thirty thousand men. It is only certain that Gustavus' army 
was much weaker than Wallenstein's. It may have num- 
bered eighteen thousand men ; while the imperialists can 
scarcely have had less than twenty-five thousand ; and this 
number was to be reinforced by fully eight thousand more, 
whenever Pappenheim should come up. 

Once set on battle, Gustavus took no account of the dis- 
parity of numbers. He knew that it was Wallenstein's strong 



GUSTAVUS' DECISION. 



385 



intrenchments, and not lack of Swedish stomach, which had 
lost him the fight at the Alte Veste ; and he advanced with 
entire confidence in himself and in them. Late at night on 
the 15th the general oificers assembled round the traveling- 
<?oach in which the king spent the night, to receive instruc- 
tions for the morrow. Some spoke of the enemy's superior 
strength, but Gustavus plainly gave his own views, and ended 
by saying that he could no longer endure to be within reach 
of "Wallenstein and not move on him sword in hand. He 
burned to show him what he and his Swedes could do in the 
open field. This answered every objection ; and all present 
crowded around to assure the king of their fidelity even unto 
death. This interview is a prototype of the famous speech of 
grim old Frederick to his generals on the eve of Leuthen. 




Gustavus Praying before Liitzen. 
(From Braun's Historical Painting 1 .) 



XXX. 

LUTZEN. NOVEMBER 16, 1632. 

Waujenstein must hold Leipsic to prevent the junction of Swedes and 
Saxons ; and the Merseburg turnpike for Pappenheim. He advanced to Liitzen 
and established himself, facing southerly along the causeway, whose ditches 
made a line of works in which Wallenstein hoped to duplicate the battle of the 
Alte Veste. On reconnoitring, Gustavus planned to turn the enemy's left by a 
sharp attack and cut him off from Leipsic ; not to be driven from his ground 
was victory enough for Wallenstein. The imperial left leaned on the Floss- 
graben, the right on Liitzen, and in its front and in front of the right centre 
were two big batteries. The foot stood in four great battles in the centre, the 
cavalry on the wings ; the ditches were lined with musketeers. Solidity was 
the theory of the imperial line. Gustavus drew up parallel to the enemy in his 
lighter order. In the wings was horse, mixed with foot, and cavalry was in 
reserve. The centre was of foot, with a heavy battery in front ; and regimental 
pieces stood all along the line. Bernard was on the left ; Kniphausen in the cen- 
tre ; the king led the right, where was to be the bulk of the fighting. After a 
cannonade, the Swedes attacked. The resistance was hearty, but the Swedish 
right forced its way across the causeway and pushed in the imperial left. The 
left was equally happy ; and the centre crossed the causeway and began to swing 
in on Wallenstein's battles. But taken in flank by a column of horse, the Swed- 
ish centre fell back in some confusion. The king heard of the disaster to his 
centre; and heading some cavalry regiments, he galloped towards the place 
from whence they had fallen back. It was foggy, and, far ahead of his men, 
he ran into a stray party of imperial cavalry and was killed. About this time 
Pappenheim came on the field, and drove back the advanced Swedish right by 
a superb charge in which he also lost his life. The king's death maddened the 
Swedes. Bernard and Kniphausen reestablished the Swedish line ; and the 
Northlanders swept everything before them, and revenged their dead hero in a 
holocaust of blood. Wallenstein retreated to Bohemia ; part of his army fled 
to Leipsic, part to Merseburg. He is said to have lost ten thousand men. 

No engagement of modern times lias a greater mass of 
conflicting records than the battle of Liitzen. From the vari- 



A PARALLEL BATTLE. 



387 



ous statements you may sketch out a dozen different theories 
of the manner in which it was lost and won. It was, how- 
ever, in the main a simple battle in parallel order, fought out 
with extraordinary obstinacy, and one whose phases were only 
those which may always occur in such an action, as the several 
parts of each line roll forward and back, in response to rein- 




Battle of Liitzen. 

forcements brought up, or to gallant attacks made or repulsed. 
The principal facts are clear ; but such interesting ones as 
the hour at which Pappenheim came upon the field, or the 
periods in the battle at which Gustavus and Pappenheim were 
killed, or indeed which was killed first, are wrapped in contra- 
dictory statement. There are indeed many different stories 
of the manner of Gustavus' death. 

The plain of Liitzen is low and flat. Cutting it substan- 



388 THE FORMATION. 

tially from southwest to northeast runs the turnpike which 
leads through Liitzen village from Weissenfels to Leipsic. 
This was Wallenstein's proper line of retreat, for he could 
not well give up Leipsic, if he was to stand between John 
George at Dresden and Gustavus at Naumburg; and he 
needed it for winter-quarters as well. The road here lies 
like a causeway above the plain ; some of the old maps show 
it straight, others with a marked curve between Liitzen and 
the Flossgraben, — as it may then have had ; but the matter 
is unessential : all details cannot possibly be reconciled. On 
either side of the road are deep ditches, generally containing 
water ; but though apparently at the time of the battle they 
were dry, they were such still as to make an excellent line of 
field-works ; and these ditches Wallenstein ordered to be well 
dug out during the night, and lined them with a strong force 
of musketeers. Running north and south a trifle less than two 
miles to the east of Liitzen was the Flossgraben, a dull stream 
meandering down towards Zeitz, and not so deep but that both 
cavalry and infantry could wade it. The causeway ditch 
could likewise be crossed by both arms ; but it was none the 
less a serious obstacle, much in favor of the imperialists, 
who intended to fight on the defensive, as they had at the 
Alte Veste. 

Wallenstein drew up his army back of the causeway and 
facing southeast, with the right flank behind and leaning on 
the village of Liitzen, which he had set afire to prevent the 
Swedes from attempting to drive his forces out ; and with 
the left flank leaning on the Flossgraben and somewhat 
refused, say some authorities. If the road was not straight, 
the imperial line may have conformed to its direction and 
thus have had a wing thrown back. It is probable that he 
had a small flying wing out beyond the Flossgraben ; cer- 
tainly the ubiquitous Croats must have pushed to the other 



WALLENSTEIN'S DEFENSES. 389 

side, to put their harassing tactics to better use than they 
could do in the line of battle. 

Along Wallenstein's front, then, ran the causeway, which 
stood up noticeably above the surrounding plain ; and to the 
eye of the imperial general it seemed to yield a good chance 
of duplicating the victory of last August, if he could hold 
his men equally well to their task. To retain it and throw 
back the Swedish attack meant to keep Leipsic and to hold 
his route towards Merseburg and Halle, where lay part of his 
troops, and from which he was anxiously expecting the return 
of Pappenheim, — his stanchest lieutenant. Not to be driven 
from the causeway was victory enough for Wallenstein, just 
as the defense of the Alte Veste was in his eyes a notable 
feat of arms. He did not gauge victory from the standpoint 
of the great captain. 

Not far back of the causeway, in front of the imperial 
right wing, was posted a battery of heavy guns, and another 
was in front of the right centre. • The former stood on a 
slight rise just north of Liitzen, in the midst of windmills. 
The number of guns has been, like that of the forces engaged, 
very variously stated. The greater part of the infantry was 
in the centre in four great battalia, set up in the Spanish 
style, and arrayed substantially as they had been at Breiten- 
feld. Much discussion has been indulged in to show that 
the imperial general had his army set up in three lines, and 
there exists a plan in Wallenstein's own hand for such a 
disposition. Be this as it may, the battle does not appear 
to have depended on there being any given number of lines. 
The imperial forces were drawn up in an order in which 
solidity played the main part, and it was Wallenstein's pur- 
pose to fight a strictly defensive battle, holding the causeway 
from Liitzen to the Flossgraben as his line of works. 

A portion of the infantry was posted in the windmills and 



390 CHANCE FOR A FLANK ATTACK. 

in the gardens which surround the village of Liitzen. The 
imperial cavalry composed the wings of the army, the left 
under Holcke and Piccolomini, though it was hoped that 
Pappenheim would arrive in season to command the left 
wing. It is said that, in imitation of Gustavus' tactics, foot 
was interspersed with horse in the imperial right, under 
Colloredo ; and they could well have been put to use behind 
the many garden walls. 

Wallenstein himself remained with the centre, and was 
carried in a litter, as his gout prevented his mounting a horse. 

The advance of the Swedes from Naumburg was such that 
they were marching directly upon the flank of the imperial 
army. It would seem as if Wallenstein's better line would 
have been across the turnpike, not along it, — perhaps, as 
suggested, behind the Bippach, — so as to enable Pappenheim 
to fall in on his right when he should arrive. Frederick 
would have sharply punished the great Czech for such a tac- 
tical blunder ; but, like • Alexander at Arbela, Gustavus 
declined to " steal a victory," and drew up for a parallel 
battle. Unless the king's idea of marching on Pegau and 
Grimma to join the Saxons, coupled to the knowledge that 
Wallenstein lay in and about Liitzen, had led him to camp 
the day before somewhat to the south of the village, it is hard 
to see why he should not have used his opportunity for a 
flank attack. But battle-tactics was as yet a simple affair ; 
Gustavus had done enough for the art of war in teaching 
armies mobility ; he cannot be held to complete the science to 
which he contributed so much. Perhaps the best explanation 
is that the king desired to drive the enemy away from 
Leipsic and not towards it ; or, in case of defeat, to retire 
towards the Saxons on the Elbe. 

In two columns corresponding to the two lines of battle he 
proposed to fight in, Gustavus advanced, and drew up in line 



"FORWARD IN GOD'S NAME!" 391 

at a distance of less than a mile from, and parallel to, the 
enemy. We know his formation better than Wallenstein's. 
Four half brigades were posted in the centre of each line. 
Count Brahe was in command of those in the first line ; 
Kniphausen of those in the second line. The right and left 
wings of the second line of the centre, under Kniphausen, 
were composed of horse. In reserve was cavalry under 
Colonel Ohm, in rear of Kniphausen. In front of the in- 
fantry centre there was one battery (some authorities say 
two) of twenty-six heavy guns ; and near forty light regi- 
mental pieces stood in front of the musketeers who sus- 
tained the horse. On both wings of the first line were 
squadrons of horse, each two separated by detachments of 
foot. In the wings of the second line there was only cav- 
alry. Liitzen lay in front of the Swedish left wing, and the 
right lay on the Flossgraben. No doubt a Swedish flying- 
wing was placed or later got beyond this waterway. Ber- 
nard commanded the left wing, and the king, with Stal- 
handske and his Finns as a body guard, the right. The 
baggage was near Meuchen, behind the Flossgraben. 

Gustavus rarely slept much in the presence of the enemy, 
but he passed the night in his traveling-coach with Bernard 
and Kniphausen. The drums were beaten long before day- 
light, and the Swedish army bestirred itself. Prayers were 
said by the chaplains, and " Eine Feste Burg " and one of 
Gustavus' own hymns were sung as the men fell in. 

Gustavus rode his brown charger and wore no armor. 
Bernard and Kniphausen begged hint to wear cuirass and 
helmet. But a cuirass irritated his old shoulder- wound, and 
he refused. His battle-speech to his men was short and to 
the point, and he rode ahead with " Forward in God's name ! 
Jesu ! Jesu ! " on his lips. 

The object Gustavus aimed at was to cut Wallenstein off 



392 THE BLACK DEVILS. 

from Leipsic, so as to recapture the place and unite with John 
George. His tactics then was to pivot on his own left, which 
faced Liitzen, and to drive the imperial left and centre away 
from the causeway. To this he addressed himself. 

Though the troops had stood to arms at daylight, it was ten 
o'clock before they reached contact with the enemy. This 
delay was largely due to the fog which blanketed the plain, 
but it is an interesting thing for those of us who have seen an 
army on the march deploy from marching column into line, 
and win a pitched battle with high percentage of casualties 
in three or four hours, to note the length of time the formal 
marshaling of an army took prior to the day of that rest- 
less tactician, Frederick. Once aligned, the Swedes opened a 
heavy artillery duel, which lasted a full hour, and under its 
cover they advanced near the turnpike and stood ready for 
hand to hand work. 

When he deemed that his artillery had made a sufficient 
impression, the king personally led forward his right wing of 
horse and foot, and gallantly charged on the causeway. He 
was received by a heavy fire ; but after a sharp and pro- 
longed tussle, the king drove the imperial musketeers from 
the ditches on both sides of the causeway, crossed this obsta- 
cle, and made a successful attack on the enemy's left wing 
beyond, driving the Croats off in the wildest flight. So 
stanch had their advance been that the imperial baggage park 
was threatened, and was summarily transferred from the left 
to the rear of the right, where lay the heavy batteries. 

The king gave orders to pay small heed to the Croats, but 
at all hazards to break the ranks of the cuirassiers. These 
fine troops under Piccolomini fought like the black devils 
they were, and their intrepid commander was repeatedly 
wounded ; but despite their bravery, they were forced back 
by the tremendous successive impacts of the squadrons 






SWEDISH CENTRE FAILS. 393 

headed by the king. Meanwhile the cavalry of the Swedish 
left wing was all but equally fortunate against the horse on 
the imperial right. And not to be behindhand, the infantry 
in the centre had advanced, driven the musketeers pell-mell 
out of their ditches, crossed the causeway, and taken the 
imperial battery opposite the centre. The initial gain had 
been sharp and marked all along the line. 

But the success was short-lived. After crossing the cause- 
way, the foot brigades wheeled somewhat to the left to take 
the imperial centre in flank, a manoeuvre which exposed their 
own ; and before they could make an impression which was 
effectual on the battles of Wallenstein, several of the impe- 
rial cavalry regiments of the left centre and left, which had 
somewhat retired, were again massed, and bore down on the 
victorious Swedes like a torrent. Thus taken crisply in flank 
and in the face of a superior force, the gallant brigades failed 
to hold their own, and after a stout struggle were driven 
back and lost the battery they had taken. They had fought 
stanchly. In one regiment every captain was shot down. 
The Yellow cavalry and the Blues had successively advanced 
to the rescue, but only to be thrown back in disorder. The 
line was wavering. A disaster might result. The loss was 
as sudden as the gain had been, and the infantry was retiring 
across the causeway. Word of this state of affairs was sent 
to Gustavus, who was still driving the enemy on the right, 
and who believed that the whole line had kept its initial 
advance. As at the Alte Veste, Wallenstein had no ambition 
to fight a battle offensive. If he could hold the turnpike, the 
victory, so far as he needed it, would be won. And now 
that the Swedish central attack had failed, and his men had 
reoccupied the causeway ditches, he did not push them out 
to accentuate his gain, but held them in their j)lace. A few 
squadrons alone galloped out beyond the imperial front. 



394 GUSTAVUS' LAST WOUND. 

While the king was reestablishing order in his right wing, 
somewhat unsettled by its hard-earned advance, and was pre- 
paring for a second blow, he learned of the retreat of his centre. 
His fears were aroused for the success of the day, and he at 
once headed the Smaland cavalry regiment, and with his 
usual impetuosity galloped over to the aid of his hard-pressed 
infantry. The king was heavy, but he rode good stock and 
fast. In his over-eagerness, and followed only by three 
companions, he galloped far ahead of his column, and in the 
fog which was again coming down upon the field, aimed for 
the place, slightly back of the causeway, where he expected 
to find his infantry, but from which the brigades had just now 
fallen back ; here, between the lines, a stray party of impe- 
rial cuirassiers rode down upon him by simple accident, una- 
ware of who it was. The king was shot in the bridle-arm ; 
and, his horse swerving towards his own line, he received a 
bullet through the body. He fell from his horse with his 
last and mortal wound. 

There was at the time a species of lull in the battle, caused 
by the falling back of the Swedish centre and the momen- 
tary pause of the right. As the imperialists had no idea of 
advancing beyond the causeway, there was a wide open space 
in their front, and it was during this lull and between the 
causeway and his own front that Gustavus fell. His death 
was announced to the army by his charger galloping rider- 
less back to the Swedish lines, covered with blood, and his 
appearance excited the men to a frenzy of revenge. 

Some time after midday Count Pappenheim appeared on 
the field from Halle, leading his van of cavalry. He had 
come with his best troops at a double-quick. Eagerly inquir- 
ing where Gustavus fought, — his death was not yet known 
to the enemy, — with a column composed of eight cavalry 
regiments, which he quickly assembled, he fell sharply on the 



VICTORY IN THE BALANCE. 395 

Swedish right wing and forced it back, practically regaining 
the ground their initial advance had won. Centre and right 
were weakening before the imperial attack ; but the Swedish 
left held its own in and about Liitzen, and Wallenstein's 
lack of push saved the Swedes harmless from disaster. At 
this juncture, or somewhat later, gallant Pappenheim was 
killed, and his regiments, lacking his fiery leadership, hesi- 
tated and fell back ; the Swedish right could once more 
gather for a blow. 

On learning of the king's death, Bernard, who was on 
the Swedish left, immediately took command, and replaced 
the king on the right. Kniphausen led the centre. Count 
Brahe replaced Bernard on the left, where the cavalry had 
already sharply and successfully attacked the causeway, Liit- 
zen and the enemy's right wing. Re-forming the ranks in the 
intervals of quiet, which only Torstenson's guns now inter- 
rupted, Bernard ordered an advance all along the line, though 
the day was fast wearing away. The Swedes again pressed 
forward, this time screwed up to the highest pitch. Between 
the darkness and the fog, manoeuvring had become impossi- 
ble. It was a mere brute push for mastery. Piccolomini 
took Pappenheim's place, and led several regiments up to 
resist the renewed attack of the Swedish horse on the impe- 
rial left. The rival lines clashed, mixed, and rolled to and 
fro in a frantic death-struggle. In their first charge the 
Swedes carried everything before them. They recovered the 
body of the king, and again drove the imperialists far be- 
yond the causeway. But some time after 4 p. m. the rest of 
Pappenheim's cavalry came up, and, maddened by the news 
of their splendid leader's death, they drove home a charge 
on the Swedish line which gained the lost ground, and once 
more pushed the assailants back across the causeway. No 
man could presage victory. 



396 SWEDISH VICTORY. 

But gallant Bernard of Weimar would hear of no retreat, 
though even brave old Kniphausen is said to have sug- 
gested it. Torstenson's guns were still able ; the line 
could be again patched up, and every Swedish heart was 
nerved to avenge the king. One more effort was made for 
the manes of the dead hero, and the charge was given with 
the vigor of loving despair. The decimated ranks of the 
Northlanders closed up shoulder to shoulder, the first and 
second lines were merged into one, and forward they went in 
the foggy dusk, with a will which even they had never shown 
before. Nothing could resist their tremendous onset. On 
right, centre, left, everywhere and without a gap, the Swedes 
carried all before them. The imperial army was torn into 
shreds and swept far back of the causeway, where so many 
brave men had that day bitten the dust. At this moment 
some ammunition chests in rear of the imperial line exploded, 
which multiplied the confusion in the enemy's ranks. Dark- 
ness had descended on the field ; but the Swedes remained 
there to mourn their beloved king, while the imperial forces 
sought refuge from the fearful slaughter and retired out of 
range. 

Liitzen has been called a drawn battle. It was unequivo- 
cally a Swedish victory. The imperialists lost all their artil- 
lery, a number of standards, and, it is said, ten or twelve 
thousand men in killed, wounded and prisoners. Part of the 
force fled to Merseburg, part to Leipsic. That Wallenstein 
could reach Leipsic is cited as proof that the battle was 
drawn. But this was rather the usual want of pursuit. The 
Swedes slept on the field, and next day returned leisurely to 
Weissenfels, to weep for their dead lord. 

Quite unaware that any future historian would find ground 
to state that the battle was drawn, Wallenstein retreated with 
the relics of his army to Bohemia. The loss of the Swedes 



GUSTAVUS' WISDOM. 397 

has been called numerically equal to that of the enemy. 
Especially was it greater in the loss of its kiug and captain. 

The dispositions of the Swedes and the vigor of their 
repeated attacks had been eminently praiseworthy. Wallen- 
stein showed indecision in fighting a defensive battle ; but no 
criticism can be passed on the manner of his fighting. It 
was a battle-royal in every sense, nobly fought out by each 
side. 

The Swedes had destroyed the last army of the emperor. 
At the opening of the year Ferdinand had been at the end 
of his resources, when Wallenstein came to his aid ; and the 
great Czech had now been utterly defeated. We know what 
Gustavus had already accomplished ; he stood on the thresh- 
old of the imperial hereditary possessions, with every land 
from the Rhine and the Alps to the Baltic and the Vistula 
subject to his control, and firmly held. Had he outlived the 
battle of Liitzen, can we doubt that he would have dictated 
peace on his own terms in Vienna ? And would it not have 
been a peace promising more durable results than if he had 
reached Vienna after his initial victory at Breitenf eld ? 
His wisdom was fully proven ; but a higher power had dis- 
posed of his life. 




Musket Battle-axe. (16th Century.) 



XXXI. 

THE MAN AND SOLDIER. 

Gustavus was tall, strong and handsome, royal in bearing, condescending 
in manner, with noble features, golden hair and a clear blue eye. In intellect 
and scholarship he had no superiors ; he was an eloquent speaker, and wrote 
hymns which are sung to-day all over Sweden. His dignity never left him ; 
but though intimate with few, he was approachable by all. Of a sensitive 
nature, he was in youth quick of word, but he learned self-control and patience. 
Earnest piety was a constant guide, impelling him to justice and good deeds. 
His ambition was pure. In strength of will he was unchanging ; he consulted 
all, but himself decided. No captain ever bore him with more splendid cour- 
age ; Alexander had no more wounds ; he went to danger as to a feast. Splen- 
did in reward, he was just but summary in punishment. A hard worker, he 
was doubly busy in the field, trusting no man's eyes but his own, nor leaving 
work to others which he might do himself. He can scarcely be said to have 
been aided by Fortune. In dealing with his half-hearted allies, Gustavus exhib- 
ited the patience of Hannibal, the persuasiveness of Caesar. He taught the 
modern soldier many lessons : method according to one well-considered plan ; 
careful accumulation of supplies ; activity in marches and manoeuvres ; rapid- 
ity of fire ; the value of taking and holding key-points ; the necessity of a sure 
base and communications ; the security which resides in discipline ; the fact that 
well-timed audacity is not foolhardiness. In winning his bastion, Gustavus 
showed caution backed by vigor ; in defeating Tilly and overrunning the Main 
country, boldness, rapidity and rare skill ; on the Lech and at the Alte Veste, 
magnificent contempt of danger and difficulty ; at Niirnberg, admirable con- 
stancy ; and at Liitzen he sealed his honorable purpose with his blood. More 
than all this, he taught the world that war may be conducted on civilized lines. 
Had he lived, he would have dictated religious peace in Germany ; as it was, he 
won it. He is properly called the Father of the Modern Art of War. 

It is a curious fact, and much to be regretted, that we 
know so little about the Hero of the Thirty Years' War. 
We are told endless facts about Frederick and Napoleon ; 
we know much less about Gustavus. 



INTELLECT AND CHARACTER. 399 

Gustavus Adolphus was of tall and powerful frame; he 
had a royal bearing, great dignity, coupled to suavity, and a 
noble carriage ; but he was inclined, in the last few years of 
his life, to corpulence. This condition, however, so little 
interfered with his virility that his fondness for physical 
exertion led him into danger as to a feast. His hair and 
beard were golden yellow ; he had large light blue eyes, very 
expressive, eager and luminous, with a soft and kindly, yet 
proud look. His forehead was lofty and his nose strongly 
Roman. His daughter, Queen Christina, wrote of him as a 
very handsome man ; he was certainly kingly in his demeanor, 
as is testified by all his contemporaries. Earnest and liberal 
in all he did, no one who came near him but felt the influence 
of his character. 

To an uncommon breadth of intellect Gustavus joined the 
well-poised knowledge of the apt scholar and the iron will of 
the true soldier. Once convinced that he was right, nothing 
could bar the execution of his project. He was of a quick, 
sensitive — one might say touchy — habit, coupled, as is rare, 
to a deep feeling for right, truth and religion. His quick 
temper was but superficial ; at heart he was kindly, charitable 
and patient. His piety was honest, outwardly and inwardly, 
and impelled him to fair dealing and uprightness. Religion 
was never a cloak. He read daily and at length in his Bible, 
and prayed as openly and unreservedly as he spoke. He was 
fond of reading, well acquainted with the classics, and studied 
keenly the works of Hugo Grotius. He once, however, said 
that had Grotius himself been a commanding general, he 
would have seen that many of his precepts could not be 
carried out. 

Gustavus spoke eloquently, and wrote easily and with a 
certain directness which in itself is the best style for a clear 
thinker. His hymns are still sung among the country folk 



400 FRIENDSHIP FOR OXENSTIERN. 

of Sweden with the fervor in which the people shrines his 
memory. 

Condescending, kind and generous, Gustavus was often 
splendid in his rewards for bravery and merit. When, in his 
youth, the later Field-Marshal Ake Tott performed some act 
of signal gallantry, the king thanked him before the whole 
forces paraded under arms, ennobled him on the spot, and 
with his own hands hung his sword upon him. But Gustavus 
was equally summary and severe. Once, on complaint being 
made of marauding by Swedish soldiers, the king assembled 
all his officers and severely held them to task ; then, going 
into the camp and seeing a stolen cow in front of the tent 
of a petty officer, he seized the man by the hair and handed 
him over to the executioner. " Come here, my son," said he ; 
" better that I punish thee, than that God, for thy sin, visit 
vengeance on me and the whole army." 

While singularly quick tempered, Gustavus was eager to 
undo a wrong he might commit. " I bear my subjects' errors 
with patience," he said; " but they too must put up with my 
quick speech." He condescended often, at times too much, 
but no one was ever known to take advantage of his affability. 
Every one in his presence felt the subtle influence of great- 
ness ; his meed was the hearty respect of all who approached 
him. 

Intimate with few men, and these only his leading generals 
or the princes he happened to be cast with, Gustavus was 
much attached to his chancellor, Axel Oxenstiern, and relied 
markedly on his judgment. Only Oxenstiern was privileged 
to speak plainly to the king. " You are too cold in all things, 
and hamper me too much," once said the monarch. " True," 
replied the chancellor, " but did I not now and then throw 
cold water on the fire, your Majesty had long since burned 
up." It was chiefly at dinner, which at that day was eaten 



GAUDIUM CERTAMINIS. 401 

before noon, that the king talked, and discussion then was 
ample. 

This always busy monarch was especially busy in the field. 
Like Napoleon in his early years, he saw throughout life 
everything with his own eye; he would not rely on others, 
and always rode with the van of the army. His eagerness to 
know what was in his front many times put him in peril of 
his life ; but he never overlooked an advantage of ground, nor 
was late in giving an order to meet the requirements of the 
occasion. In the cabinet he was strong and suggestive, the 
prime mover in every scheme ; and though he constantly held 
councils of war, they never failed to fight. 

He studied to know his opponents. He gauged Pappen- 
heim high ; Tilly was " brave, but nothing but an old cor- 
poral ; " Wallenstein he underrated, partly because he dis- 
liked his pomp and egotism, and feared his loyalty. And yet 
he did him ample justice. Gustavus himself was too great to 
harbor petty jealousy of greatness in others. What he admired 
in Pappenheim was that which he himself so notably possessed, 
— a quick decision and fiery execution. 

Sensitive to a degree with regard to his royal name and 
dignity, Gustavus hated adulation. Just prior to Liitzen, 
when, in passing through Naumburg, the people prostrated 
themselves, he remarked with a protest : " Our cause stands 
well, but I fear God will punish me for the folly of this 
people." 

Except Alexander, no great captain showed the true love 
of battle as it burned in the breast of Gustavus Adolphus. 
Such was his own contempt of death, that his army could not 
but fight. When the king was ready at any moment to lay 
down his life for victory, how should not the rank and file 
sustain him ? With such a leader, a defeat like Tilly's at 
Breitenfeld, or Wallenstein's at Liitzen, was not possible. 



402 THE MASTER'S HAND. 

Nor was his courage a mere physical quality ; his moral and 
intellectual courage equaled it. Hannibal's march into Italy 
was but one grade bolder than Gustavus' into Germany ; 
Csesar's attack at Zela was no more reckless, if less matured, 
than Gustavus' at the Lech. 

The military student may read the records of war for seven- 
teen centuries succeeding the death of Caesar, without finding 
in its conduct any mark of that art and purpose which the 
great Roman, as well as Alexander and Hannibal, so con- 
stantly exhibited. Abundant courage, abundant intelligence, 
abundant opportunity will be found, but no broad, clean-cut 
method. When, however, the student turns to the page which 
narrates the operations of the Swedish king, he once again 
recognizes the hand of the master. The same method which 
has delighted him in the annals of the Macedonian, the Car- 
thaginian and the Roman is apparent ; the broad, firm ideal 
and never swerving moral force of which those captains were 
such brilliant examples may be seen; and from now on, 
thanks to the impress made on the art, he will find generals 
of the second rank who intelligently carry forward what 
Gustavus Adolphus rescued from the oblivion of so many 
centuries. 

The operations of Gustavus in the Thirty Years' War are 
divisible into three epochs. From his appearance in Germany 
to his passing of the Elbe, his conduct of affairs was marked 
by great caution. It must be borne in mind that Gustavus 
had, barring the technical skill of the day, no military teach- 
ing except that which came from his study of the deeds of the 
ancients, and no guide except his own genius. War, up to 
his day and in his day, had been unmethodical and purpose- 
less. This first epoch was of fourteen months' duration, and 
was consumed in securing a foothold in Pomerania, Meck- 
lenburg and Brandenburg, in so careful and methodical a 



GUSTAVUS' METHOD. 403 

manner as to stand out in contrast to any other campaign of 
this era. Every circumstance was against him. He had but 
slender means to oppose the emperor's apparently unlimited 
resources. He came upon the scene at a time when the cause 
he had embraced was a wreck. The Protestant princes whom 
he sought to help, at whose request he had undertaken the 
gigantic task, in lieu of flocking to his standard, looked on 
him with suspicion, and afforded him small countenance. 
Yet he lost not courage. With a clear aim in view, he pressed 
steadily on, and reached his end gradually, step by step. He 
bent every effort to secure the cooperation of the men who so 
coldly scanned his work. He exhibited patience akin to Han- 
nibal's, persuasiveness like to Caesar's, boldness equal to Alex- 
ander's. He captured fortresses at the key-points and held 
them : rarely was a strong place wrested from the Swedish 
grasp. He accumulated supplies where he could be sure of 
keeping them : but once during his German campaign — at 
Niirnberg — was he out of victual. He firmly secured his 
communications with the base he thus carefully established 
and with Sweden, and never manoeuvred so as to lose them. 
He gradually overcame the shortsighted policy of his brother 
Protestants, and strengthened himself with allies and fresh 
accessions of recruits. He acted, not as the leaders of armies 
for many centuries had acted, as if the population of the 
countries they traversed were mere brute beasts, mere pro- 
ducers of food for the great and their hirelings, but with a 
spirit of kindliness and Christian charity which won over all 
the populations to his side. He kept troops under a discipline 
which was the marvel of its day, supplied their wants by legit- 
imate means, paid them regularly, and allowed no marauding 
or plunder. The few instances in which the Swedes were 
convicted of crimes which were then the daily accompaniment 
of the profession of arms were summarily punished. Gusta- 



404 BOLDNESS SUCCEEDS CAUTION. 

vus understood how to avoid battle with an enemy who was 
too strong to beat ; how to lead him away from the key-points 
of the theatre of operations, so as to secure them himself ; 
how to operate energetically against an enemy who was his 
equal or his inferior in strength ; how to employ the tactical 
ability of his troops ; how to infuse into his men his own 
enthusiasm on the battle-field ; how to utilize a victory to a 
greater extent than any of his predecessors of the Middle 
Ages or of his own era, and how to heighten and maintain 
the morale of his troops in victory and defeat alike. The 
only failure of Gustavus' first epoch was his inability to save 
Magdeburg from the hands of Tilly. This was due not to his 
failure to advance to her rescue, but to a natural miscalcula- 
tion of her powers of resistance, of Tilly's perseverance, and 
to the perverse, refusal of the Saxon elector to allow the 
Swedes a passage over his territory. 

Then came the second epoch. So soon as, by his cautious 
and intelligent conduct, the king had set himself firmly in 
place between the sea, the Oder and the Elbe, had protected 
his flanks and rear from all probability of danger, and had 
persuaded the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony to join 
his standard, in other words had established his bastion, he 
at once altered his method of operation. When the enemy 
would stand he assumed the offensive, crossed the Elbe, 
attacked him at Breitenfeld, added immensely to his strength 
and morale by beating him, and, leaving a portion of his 
troops to operate with the allies and to protect his flanks and 
communications, he advanced rapidly into the very heart of 
Germany. In three weeks, he had established himself firmly 
on the Main, in Franconia and Thuringia ; in ten days after, 
he had advanced down the Main to the Rhine, taking all the 
strong places on the way ; in three months more, he had laid 
his hands on the whole middle Rhine country ; and in two 



THE ALLIES CHANGE. 405 

and a half months from this last period, he had crossed the 
Danube, beaten the enemy at the Lech by one of the boldest 
operations undertaken since the Christian era, and had occu- 
pied almost all Bavaria. Thus in eight months, from Sep- 
tember, 1631, to June, 1632, he had traversed and held a 
much larger territory than he had previously gained in four- 
teen, and had become the most powerful of the monarchs of 
Europe. He put to use the boldest and most decisive opera- 
tions, and yet never failed in the method and caution which 
were his guide; by his skill, courage and intelligence he 
established himself as firmly in southern Germany as he had 
previously done in northern. A glance at the territory he 
covered, — from the north shores of the Baltic to the foothills 
of the Alps, — and a comparison of it with that conquered by 
any other captain of modern times, and the measure of the 
few months during which he was actively a combatant in the 
Thirty Years' War, will satisfy the most exacting admirer of 
the past masters in the military art ; and this especially so, if 
we remember the political entanglements in which the king 
was caught, the fact that he came to save and not to conquer, 
and that statesmanship often dictated his manoeuvres rather 
than his clear grasp of the strategic situation. 

Gustavus was now at the height of his reputation and suc- 
cess ; the eyes of all Europe were upon him, and he was 
ready to attack Austria from the west. Here begins the third 
epoch of his operations. At this juncture the policy of France 
changed ; she feared that Gustavus would aspire to a political 
prominence which would unsettle the balance of power in 
Europe ; his allies began to suspect him of aspiring to the 
crown of Germany ; and Wallenstein, the only soldier in 
Germany who was in any sense worthy to be matched against 
the king, raised a large army, and by marching on Saxony 
threatened the Swedish communications with the Baltic, estab- 



406 GUSTAVUS VERSUS WALLENSTEIN. 

lished with so much care and skill. The whole situation 
changed. Gustavus was no longer so secure as he had been 
when his allies were whole-hearted, and his policy suddenly 
changed back to the cautious one he had early shown. Of 
the first importance in all his operations, whether offensive 
or defensive, particularly so as he was now apt to be thrown 
on his own resources, were his conmiunications with the Main 
and the Rhine, and with his bastion in north Germany. 
Second to this was the protection of allied Niirnberg, to 
which city he had promised succor, should she be attacked. 
By taking position at Niirnberg, he accomplished all these 
ends, for he drew Wallenstein away from Saxony, and kept 
him away from the Main and Rhine. At Niirnberg, so long 
as his forces remained largely inferior to Wallenstein's, Gus- 
tavus acted on the defensive, indulging only in small war ; 
but when, by his lieutenants coming up, the Swedish army 
grew to equal Wallenstein's, Gustavus again went over to an 
offensive startling in its boldness. 

It cannot be denied that, while Wallenstein was in the field, 
Gustavus gave over part of his initiative to the Bohemian 
as he had never done before. But this was in a great measure 
owing to the political difficulties by which he was beset. 
Had the elector of Saxony been the firm and loyal ally to 
Gustavus that Gustavus was to him ; had the king not been 
compelled to look sharply for treason in his rear, it is doubt- 
ful whether he would have yielded any part of his initiative, 
even to his great opponent. 

When his offensive at Niirnberg failed and his provision 
quite gave out, Gustavus retired, not at once to Bavaria, but 
to the Main, to make sure of his communications there ; and 
so soon as it appeared that Wallenstein had no immediate 
thought of disturbing these, leaving a lieutenant to observe 
him, Gustavus again took up his old thread and returned to 



ALTERNATING BOLDNESS AND CAUTION. 407 

Bavaria to complete his conquest of Swabia and Wtirtemberg. 
Then, for the second time, Wallenstein, by moving on Sax- 
ony, coupled to the weak attitude of the elector, threatened, 
and now more seriously, the king's communications with the 
Baltic, and compelled him again to resort to quick and deci- 
sive operations. His march to Saxony and his attack on the 
enemy at Liitzen were rapid, bold and skillful. 

His life's striving here closed in a glorious death ; but the 
work the great king accomplished in little over two years in 
Germany was so vast, so solid and so intelligently planned, 
that it remains scarcely doubtful that, had he lived, he would 
have dictated to entire Germany the terms upon which the 
religious faith of all men should be held and practiced. 

The student of Gustavus' life will notice in these several 
epochs a peculiarly intelligent adaptation of his work to the 
existing conditions. From his landing at Riigen to his pas- 
sage of the Elbe, there was a cautious but by no means inde- 
cisive policy, to be largely ascribed to the unexpected cold- 
ness of the German Protestants ; to the ungrateful laxness 
of his cousins, the dukes of Mecklenburg; to the brainless 
hebetude of the elector of Brandenburg ; to the unintelligent 
yearning for neutrality of the elector of Saxony. The prob- 
lem was one of politics, not war. From the crossing of the 
Elbe to the starving-match at Niirnberg, the student will see 
exceptional activity and courage, in no wise lacking intelli- 
gent, methodical caution. From the break-up at Niirnberg 
to Gustavus' death upon the field at Liitzen, he will recog- 
nize an alternation as the circumstances dictated, from the 
cautious manoeuvring of the first epoch to the intrepid energy 
of the second. 

From Caesar's time on, Gustavus was the first who firmly 
and intellectually carried through a campaign on one well- 
considered, fully digested, broad, and far-seeing plan, and 



408 HEEDING COUNSEL. 

who swerved therefrom only for the time being to meet con- 
ditions which could not be foreseen from the beginning ; whose 
grasp was such that, whatever the conduct of the enemy, he 
was never compelled to abandon, but at most to vary, his 
plan ; and whose work was done against an enemy at most 
times much his superior, and among friends whose half- 
hearted loyalty made them more dangerous than the foe. 

Gustavus was in the habit of assembling his generals in 
council. The advice of his most trusted lieutenants was often 
opposed to what he did ; but they could not see as far as he 
did. Not even Oxenstiern's crisp judgment was equal to the 
king's. And a council of war under Gustavus never deterred 
the king from pushing home. He listened patiently to all 
his generals ; but he decided the action himself. It was he 
who maintained the consistency of his course through good 
and evil fortune alike. Each variation had its definite object, 
which attained, the general plan was at once resumed. In 
all Gustavus did there was a certain intelligent sequence and 
interdependence of movements that produced a perfectly sys- 
tematic whole, in which the unity of plan was never disturbed. 
And with this broad plan there always went hand in hand a 
careful execution of detail upon which depended the success 
of the whole. His occupation remained firm ; his victualing 
was sufficient to his needs ; his movements accomplished what 
he sought to attain. Even when, as before Niirnberg, or 
before Liitzen, he was driven to change his operation lest his 
allies in north Germany should play him false, it was only 
to defer, not to abandon, his own project. 

In pursuance of his cautious policy Gustavus neglected no 
step of his advance. He left behind him no important for- 
tress or city without observing, blockading or besieging it ; 
he held the passages of all important rivers in his path by 
erecting suitable bridge-heads, or by occupying necessary 



VIGOR OF EXECUTION. 409 

towns which controlled them ; he kept upon his line of opera- 
tions suitable detachments, often armies, or met threats in 
force upon them by a prompt movement of his main force 
upon the enemy. He so managed the division of his armies 
as not to decrease his own strength, nor to lose the ability to 
concentrate at least as rapidly as the enemy ; he used his 
allies for the work they could best perform ; he kept the 
main offensive in his own hands, generally so ordering that 
his lieutenants should act on the defensive, unless they out- 
numbered the enemy, and then he urged them to all due 
vigor ; while he himself always undertook the part which 
entailed the greatest labor, and called for the most courage 
and intelligence. 

Noteworthy as was Gustavus' caution, his vigor of execu- 
tion when he undertook a fighting offensive was as remark- 
able. His caution was not the caution of Wallenstein, who 
fought shy of battle, and fed his men by devastating the land 
of foe and friend ; it was the caution which watched his base 
and line of communications, his victual, his munition and his 
allies ; while his decisiveness lay in his intelligent choice 
between sharp movement upon the enemy with his whole 
force when the conditions were favorable to a battle, or when 
the moral superiority of the troops would allow, and the 
policy of seizing important provinces and cities, and of util- 
izing the resources of the country and of allies so as to increase 
the circle of his operations. His caution was such that, by 
every step he advanced into the heart of Germany, he weak- 
ened the enemy by just so much. "Wallenstein left the land 
he crossed useless to the enemy because he had pillaged it as 
he went ; Gustavus spared the country he traversed, but he 
held it by enlisting the population in his favor, and by care- 
ful military occupation. The simple recital of his marches 
and manoeuvres shows their value. 



410 TRULY A GREAT CAPTAIN. 

The secret of Gustavus' successes lay, not in the element of 
luck, for luck may be said on the whole to have run against 
him rather than in his favor, — not against him as it ran 
against the Carthaginian, but certainly not in his favor as it 
ran in Caesar's, — the secret lay in his broad and intelligent 
general plan, in his adherence to the work as he had originally 
cut it out, and in his suiting his bold operations or cautious 
manoeuvres to the circumstances as they existed or arose. As 
with Alexander, Hannibal and Caesar, it was the man him- 
self whose very brain and soul were put into his work ; and 
this man possessed all those qualities of head and heart 
which produce results in war whenever they coexist with that 
other factor, opportunity. Equally great as monarch and as 
soldier, he united in his one person the art of both. His 
nation and his army were devoted to him as history has rarely 
shown devotion. His motives were perhaps the highest and 
purest which have ever inspired any of the great captains ; his 
pursuit of them was steadfast and noble, open-handed and 
above-board, courageous and discreet. In weighing his intel- 
ligence, sound judgment, strong will, perseverance, hardihood 
and carefulness, he is properly put in the rank of the six 
great captains, — three of ancient, three of modern days. If 
we look further and gauge the results of what he did, if we 
view the purposeless and barbarous nature of war as it was 
conducted up to his day ; if we weigh the influence which his 
short two years' campaign had upon all modern war, we may 
indeed in a moral sense, and in a sense making toward civili- 
zation, place Gustavus Adolphus yet higher. His pointing 
out the importance of key-points — at that time generally for- 
tresses — in holding a country ; the value of feeding an army 
by careful accumulation of supplies, instead of by ravaging 
every territory traversed ; the use of a carefully drawn plan 
of operations, extending over the whole ground to be covered ; 



FATHER OF MODERN WAR. 411 

and the propriety of waging war in a more Christian and civ- 
ilized spirit, marks the first step towards the modern system. 
Gustavus Adolphus has fairly earned the title of Father of 
the Modern Art of War, and must be acknowledged as the 
captain of all others who re-created methodical, systematic, 
intellectual war, and who taught the world that there could 
exist such a thing as civilized warfare. 

After his death his lieutenants endeavored to carry out his 
system ; but there was no one, not even Oxenstiern, who was 
equal to the task. They retained something of what he gave 
them ; in many things they slid back into the old ruts ; and 
war again assumed the aspect of gigantic raids. 

Among his enemies, during the remainder of the Thirty 
Years' War, history shows nothing but inhumanity, over 
which it is well to draw a veil. 



Fusee Arrows. 



XXXII. 

NORDLINGEN. 1633-1634. 

The death of Gustavus altered the entire aspect of German affairs. There 
was no longer a centre point, for Oxenstiern was not a monarch ; but he and 
Richelieu kept on with the work which Gustavus had so well builded. Many 
of the powers stepped out of the Swedish programme, but the war went on. 
Bernard next year was to operate down the Danube ; a Saxon-Swedish force 
was to manoeuvre in Silesia ; a third army in Westphalia. The Weser army 
succeeded well ; Bernard and Baner, along the , Danube, advanced as far as 
Upper Austria ; Horn kept the imperialists out of Swabia. The Silesian force 
advanced against Wallenstein, who prudently retired to a fortified camp, while 
his lieutenants invaded Saxony. He then moved on the Oder ; but his conduct 
was weak ; and later returning to Bohemia, he was assassinated in February, 
1634. Archduke Ferdinand took command of the imperial force, captured 
Ratisbon and Donauworth, and sat down before Nordlingen. Bernard and Horn 
went to its relief, but attacking the archduke without proper concentration, 
they frittered away their strength, and were disastrously defeated, with the 
loss of the bulk of their army, and all their material. Men who made a 
mark as lieutenants of Gustavus found that there is more to war than they had 
understood. 

The death of Gustavus Adolphus completely changed the 
current of affairs in Germany. Its first effect was a practi- 
cal rupture of all the treaties which bound the Protestant 
princes to the Swedish cause. The majority of them shortly 
began to make approaches leading to reconciliation to the 
empire. Richelieu was the only man who saw that now more 
than ever was it essential to uphold the balance of power 
against the Hapsburgs. It was he who stepped in and 
induced the Swedes to continue the war. Oxenstiern was 
the natural successor of Gustavus in the control of both the 
military and political issues ; he agreed with the French min- 



OXENSTIERN AS CHIEF. 413 

ister, and despite her exhaustion, Sweden went on, hoping to 
gain, in the end, the object for which Gustavus had fought, 
as far at least as Swedish security was concerned. The 
treaty with Russia was renewed ; Poland agreed to a contin- 
uance of the existing truce ; and the entire resources and 
confidence of the Swedish nation were given to the great 
chancellor. But even Oxenstiern was not a Gustavus. The 
German princes, who had been ready to follow the lead of the 
splendid king, were unwilling to subordinate themselves to a 
mere prime minister ; and Richelieu had much ado in pre- 
vailing on them to so act as not to forfeit the gain already 
made. In one way or other, however, they were fairly well 
committed to the cause ; and for two years the work and 
method of Gustavus went on under Oxenstiern, — so far at 
least as was possible without the presence of the man and 
king himself. 

The strategic plan contemplated three lines of operation. 
Bernard, with the bulk of the Swedish army, was to move 
into south Germany, pick up the troops left there by Gusta- 
vus, and then, basing on the Main, work down the valley of 
the Danube. Part of the Swedish army, with the Saxon and 
Brandenburg contingents, was to operate in Bohemia and 
Silesia. Another part, with the troops of the Hessian and 
lower Saxon Circle, was to hold Westphalia and protect 
north Germany. The winter succeeding Liitzen was con- 
sumed in preparing for the execution of the comprehensive 
plan. 

But Ferdinand was not idle. The fortune of war had rid 
him of his arch-enemy, and he foresaw greater advantages 
from a continuance of the struggle than from any peace 
which could be made with Richelieu at the council-board. 
To be sure, the army of Wallenstein was almost broken up, 
and had to be recruited anew ; but the Bavarian forces were 



414 WALLENSTEIN'S WEAK POLICY. 

intact, and had been considerably increased by accessions 
from Lorraine and from Spanish troops. Few things go fur- 
ther to disprove the standing which has been claimed for 
Wallenstein as the best captain of his era than the secon- 
dary role he now played, after the only man who was called 
his equal had been removed by the accident of battle. 

In the spring of 1633 the allies began operations more 
vigorously than the imperialists. In the Weser country they 
beat the forces of Merode and Gronfeld, and captured many 
fortresses. On the Danube, Bernard joined Baner, who 
had been forced out of Bavaria ; and while Horn drove the 
imperialists out of Swabia into Switzerland and besieged 
Constance, Bernard pushed the emperor's army down the 
river, took Ratisbon before Gallas, whom Wallenstein at 
once dispatched from Bohemia to its succor, could arrive 
on the spot, and then crossed the Isar and moved on Upper 
Austria. 

Meanwhile Aldringer, whose duty it was to contain Horn, 
marched into the Tyrol, where he joined a heavy body of 
Spanish troops and pushed his way through Swabia on Alsa- 
tia, hoping both to neutralize Horn and to entice Bernard 
away from his Danube conquests. Horn followed, after 
drawing in what reinforcements he could; and Aldringer 
found his scheme so unpromising of success that he retired. 

To offset these gains, the Catholic armies had the upper 
hand in Silesia and Saxony. The allies, early in the year, 
marched through Lusatia into Silesia and overran that prov- 
ince. Wallenstein met this operation by moving from Bohe- 
mia into Silesia, where he took up a fortified camp at Miin- 
sterberg, from which, despite very great superiority in force, 
he retired on the approach of the allies. This defensive 
policy on Wallenstein's part is difficult to understand, and 
redounds little to his credit. Meanwhile Holcke and Pic- 



THE GREAT CZECH ASSASSINATED. 415 

colomini invaded Saxony ; the former took Leipsic, the latter 
threatened Dresden. Arnim hurried back to defend the 
electorate, leaving Thurn with but twenty-five hundred men 
in Silesia. This was Wallenstein's opportunity, for he had 
forty thousand men. He moved on Thurn, beat him, and 
marched down the Oder, captured Frankfort and Landsberg, 
and even raided beyond the Warta. But the imperial gener- 
al's operations essentially lacked vigor, even with nothing to 
oppose him ; and he finally yielded to the entreaties of the 
emperor and returned to Bohemia, from whence he marched 
on Bavaria to hold head against Bernard. His approach of 
the Upper Palatinate did indeed force Bernard to retire ; 
but Wallenstein went into winter-quarters, owing to the late 
season, ready to march on Saxony or back to Bavaria in the 
spring. The great Czech's career was, however, summarily 
cut short. His peculiar character and faithlessness had made 
him too many enemies among the rich and powerful, from 
Ferdinand down. He was assassinated in February, 1634, 
in the fortress of Eger. 

At the beginning of the spring of 1634 Bernard again 
advanced on Upper Austria. The imperial army was now 
wholly at the disposition of the emperor ; and his son, the 
Archduke Ferdinand, was placed in command, with Gallas 
as his second. This force marched on Eatisbon, joined the 
duke of Lorraine, who with the Bavarian army was besieging 
the place, captured it on the 26th of July, and marched up 
the left bank of the river. Bernard retired to Augsburg, 
gathered in Horn's troops, and took post at Lauingen. The 
archduke moved to Donauworth, and taking it August 16, 
marched on and laid siege to Nordlingen. 

Meanwhile Baner and Arnim had advanced into Bohemia, 
but had been beaten at Prague on the 28th of June, and had 
returned to Saxony. 



416 THE PLAIN OF NORDLINGEN. 

Nordlingen called on Bernard for assistance. The duke, 
with Horn, had sixteen thousand foot and ten thousand horse, 
but the archduke and Gallas had thirty-five thousand men or 
over. Bernard desired to await the rhinegrave, but the situ- 
ation of the town had become desperate ; it had withstood one 
assault, but could not much longer hold out. He decided on 
attacking the imperial army. 

The archduke was carrying on the siege from the south 
only ; but a reinforcement that Bernard managed to send the 
garrison did not hinder the operations, which were pressed 
vigorously. Horn advised taking up a strong position and 
trying to cut off the besiegers from victual ; but Bernard was 
for a battle, and he was sustained by a majority of the higher 
officers. He still felt the enthusiasm of Liitzen. It was, how- 
ever, with great surprise that, on the 5th of September, the 
imperial commander saw the army of the allies, which had 
lain back in the hills on the road to Ulm, appear and offer 
battle. 

The plain of Nordlingen is bounded on the southwest and 
south, at a distance of three or four miles from the city, by 
a chain of hills, which rise from three hundred to six hundred 
feet. Nearer the town, across the road to Ulm, are other 
hills, perhaps one hundred feet high, and between the two 
runs a small brook, the Goldbach or Forellenbach. It was 
here that the archduke undertook to defend his siege opera- 
tions from interruption by the allies. On the approach of 
the latter, he left only five thousand men in the lines, and 
advanced to meet Bernard with the rest. He was able to 
anticipate them, and as the vanguard filed out from the 
higher hills, the imperial cavalry fell upon it and drove it 
back. It was essential for Bernard to gain full possession 
of the debouches from these hills, and this he accomplished. 
He was anxious, before the enemy could do so, to seize the 



THE ARMIES IN LINE. 



417 



lower chain of hills, as these were practically the key to the 
battle-field ; and he sent out a brigade of infantry with a 
battery to get a foothold there, while he himself deployed his 
army in the valley along the Goldbach. But the day was 
far gone, and as the allied artillery was not able to get a 
satisfactory position, the duke deferred the attack till the 
morrow. 

The archduke spent the night fortifying the hills he had 
secured, and in placing batteries to advantage. He occupied 




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Battle of Nordlingen. 

a line from Schmahingen to Hohlheim. On the heights of 
Aalburg on his left he expended special care, and placed 
there his best troops, the Spanish foot. The cavalry of the 
left wing lay behind works in two lines ; the German foot 
held the right with a good part of the cavalry. There were, 
all told, seventeen thousand foot and thirteen thousand horse. 
At daybreak of September 6 the allies broke out from 
their position in two columns, the right under Horn, the left 
under Bernard. Horn was to attack near Schmahingen, Ber- 
nard near Ederheim and alono- the Ulm road. The duke had 



418 BAD MANAGEMENT. 

no difficulty in seizing the rest of the higher hills, which only 
the imperial van had occupied. The imperialists contented 
themselves with bombarding the hills so occupied from their 
batteries opposite. Horn's cavalry, meanwhile, by a circuit, 
had got around the Aalburg position and attacked it in flank, 
while the foot had deployed in front of the imperial works 
and had advanced to the assault. But the cavalry was driven 
back on the infantry line, and though the Swedes, with their 
ancient gallantry, captured the first line of intrenchments and 
some of the guns, they paused, and after holding themselves 
some time, were thrust out with loss ; a few of the most 
severely punished regiments turned to flee, and gradually the 
whole line fell back in confusion. The imperial cavalry of 
the left now sallied out against them ; an unlucky explosion 
in some ammunition wagons tended to increase the difficulty, 
and in a short while the entire Swedish column was drifting 
back, sharply followed by the archduke's cavalry squadrons. 
"Were these the same Swedes who stood twenty-four hours in 
front of the Alte Veste, who time and again thrust Wallen- 
stein's best troops out of their defenses at the Liitzen cause- 
way? Where was that bold spirit, that endurance under 
trial, which Gustavus had breathed into their ranks ? 

This failure of the allied right made a bad impression upon 
the centre and left. Their work ceased to show that energy 
which commands success. Bernard sent some regiments to 
the aid of Horn, and committed the grave error of detailing 
a considerable part of his troops towards Nordlingen to seek 
communication with the garrison, at a moment when he should 
have concentrated all his forces for a decisive blow on some 
one spot to stave off the impending disaster. There was but 
one outcome to such conduct. The division sent on this 
absurd errand was attacked and cut up by the imperialists, 
and the archduke at once assumed the offensive. 



TOTAL DEFEAT. 419 

Horn, during this time, had reassembled his scattered regi- 
ments, and was ready to advance anew ; but the Spaniards 
had taken all the positions he had vacated, and he was unable 
to recapture one of them. The reinforcement which Bernard 
had sent to him lost its way, and began operations on its own 
account. There was a lack of common purpose in the allied 
army. The imperial artillery was so effectively served that 
Horn, after a six hours' battle, was fain to withdraw. On 
the allied left matters were no better ; and after much cred- 
itable fighting, so ill-directed as to be useless, this wing too 
gave way in confusion, and fled down the Ulm turnpike. 
Horn's cavalry had decamped ; his foot, under his own cour- 
ageous example, stood its ground where he had last rallied 
them ; but the entire column was cut up or captured, Horn 
and three general officers among the latter. 

The defeat of the allies was total, and it was due to Ber- 
nard's lack of definite plan. It is said that twelve thousand 
men were killed or wounded, eight thousand men captured ; 
one hundred and seventy flags and eighty guns, and the entire 
train, fell into the hands of the archduke, whose losses are 
set down as a bare twelve hundred men. 

Nordlingen surrendered next day. Bernard retired to 
Alsatia with his broken forces. The allied cause had been 
fatally checked. This battle ended what we have called the 
Swedish period of the Thirty Years' "War. 

In May, 1635, peace was made at Prague between the 
empire and Saxony. The elector received Lusatia, and the 
archbishopric of Magdeburg was given for life to his son 
Augustus. It was agreed that the ecclesiastical estates which 
were not held immediately from the emperor, and which had 
been confiscated before the convention of Passau (1552), 
should remain to the present possessors forever ; all others 
should remain until 166T in the hands of the present possess- 



420 



PEACE WITH THE EMPEROR. 



ors, and then forever, unless some new arrangement should 
meanwhile be made. A general amnesty was given to all 
except the Bohemian and Palatinate rebels. Common cause 
was to be made against Sweden, and only Lutheran worship 
was to be tolerated. This peace was accepted by the elector 
of Brandenburg and most of the Protestant potentates. 




French Sergeant. 
(1630.) 



XXXIII. 
CROMWELL. 1642-1651. 

Cromwell was one of the greatest of men. His rank among generals is less 
high. He was the originator of the New Model soldier of the Commonwealth, — 
the regular who defeated successively all the militia of the royalists. He was 
an accomplished cavalry leader, who never failed to win whenever he charged. 
But Cromwell was not a great strategist, however good a tactician ; and the 
opposition to him was never serious. His record of victories is interesting 
rather than hrilliant ; Marston Moor, Naseby, Dunbar, Worcester, make grand 
chapters in English history, but they do not teach us what Breitenfeld and 
Blenheim do. No one can underrate the services of Cromwell to England ; he 
was a man capable of doing splendidly anything to which he put his hand ; as 
statesman he has had few equals, but as a mere soldier he can scarcely aspire 
to the second rank. That he copied Gustavus was but natural ; the whole of 
Europe, ever since 1630, had been copying him ; and it is a slur on Cromwell's 
memory to assert that he was so lacking in intelligence as not to know what 
Gustavus had been doing. As a soldier he is strictly a product of the Swedish 
school. As a man he was essentially English — and his own prototype. 

Ten years after the death of Gustavus on the field of 
Liitzen, the civil war in England broke out. Charles stood 
at Nottingham with a patchwork army of ten thousand men. 
Prince Eupert ("Rupert of the Rhine," son of Frederick of 
the Palatinate and Elizabeth of England) was in command 
of the horse. The parliament army of double its numbers, 
but equally scrappy, lay in its front, under Devereux. Many 
officers in both armies had been trained in the Thirty Years' 
War ; but there were as many tramps under both colors as 
there were soldiers. Roughly, the middle classes and the 
southern and eastern counties were with the parliament ; the 
upper classes, the peasantry and the northern and western 



422 THE "NEW MODEL." 

counties were with the king; but there was no such line 
of demarcation as in our civil war. Except unmethodical 
operations, and the fact that Cromwell began to discipline 
his " Ironsides " in the winter of 1642, little occurred for 
two years. The parliament lost rather than gained ground, 
and England felt in a lesser degree what had been the hor- 
rors of the war in Germany. 

Cromwell began his " New Model " discipline with a troop, 
of which he was captain. There was nothing new in it; it 
was but the imitation by a strong, resolute, intelligent man of 
what another great man and greater captain had done within 
the generation. Cromwell was broad enough to understand 
what he and all other Englishmen had watched, the wonder- 
ful campaigns of 1630, 1631 and 1632 in Germany; and 
wise enough, when the occasion came, to apply the lessons 
they taught. To assert that his military skill was but a 
reflection of Gustavus' is no slight to Cromwell, who as 
a man and a ruler was the equal of the Swede. 

Cromwell's men were honest, pious yeomen. He asked, he 
could have, no better material on which to work; and he 
trained himself as he trained them, rising from captain of a 
troop to colonel of a regiment, general of a brigade of horse, 
commander of an army, captain-general. On the parliament 
muster-rolls were twenty thousand foot and five thousand 
horse, or twenty regiments and seventy-five troops of sixty 
sabres each. In the cavalry, as it first stood, Cromwell 
served as captain, and among the officers of regiments and 
troops were numbers of his relations and friends. The cav- 
alry corps was home to him. 

At Edgehill, on October 23, 1642, the royalists had twelve 
thousand men, the parliament fifteen thousand. Volcanic 
Rupert, on the royal right, charged and routed Essex's left, 
and then characteristically turned to plunder in Kineton. 



NOBLESSE OBLIGE. 423 

The royal left had equal success, and the battle seenied lost, 
when there came up thirteen troops of the cavalry of the par- 
liament, among them Cromwell's. They had other ideas in 
their heads than plunder. Riding in on the victorious royal 
foot, they at once turned the tide. The infantry was help- 
less ; it was mowed down like grass. Rupert only returned 
in season to save the king from capture and to cover the 
retreat. Of the four (some say six) thousand loss the royal 
army bore the most. Edgehill proved that Rupert was gal- 
lant but unsteady ; that the royal foot was wretched ; and 
that the army of the parliament lacked cohesion. But it also 
showed in England what Gustavus had shown in Germany, 
that a man may carry the Bible into camp, and yet use his 
sabre-arm like the best of the fire-eaters, — as no fire-eater 
ever can. 

Cromwell recognized what noblesse oblige meant. He knew 
that the parliamentary army was made up (as he said) of 
" old decayed serving-men, and tapsters and such kind of fel- 
lows ; " he saw that " the spirits of such base, mean fellows " 
could not encounter "gentlemen's sons, younger sons and 
persons of quality ; " he must have " men of a spirit, of a spirit 
that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go," men im- 
bued with a motive ; and he " raised such men as had the 
fear of God before them, and made some conscience of what 
they did." And " from that day forward, they were never 
beaten." Their noblesse was the fear of God. 

We English peoples are wont to ascribe all this to Crom- 
well's own invention. He himself would not have done so. It 
is an ill compliment to Oliver Cromwell's intelligence to say 
that with the Thirty Years' War drawing to a close, with con- 
fessedly numerous Englishmen and Scotchmen under his stan- 
dard who had served with the Swedes, he should not have 
known what Gustavus Adolphus had begun to do twenty, 



424 



COUNTRYMEN BEAT CAVALIERS. 



had completed ten, years before ; how he had transformed 
his poor Swedish peasant louts into invincible soldiers, who 
could beat the emperor's chivalry with no other talisman than 
the Bible. Cromwell, says Baxter, " had especial care to get 
religious men into his troop ; these men were of greater 
understanding than common soldiers, and made not money 
but that which they took for the public felicity to be their 
end." 

The minutiae of drill Cromwell early learned from Captain 
(or Colonel) John Dalbier, a Dutch veteran, who had seen 

service on the continent; but 
he made his own rules of 
discipline, and so well con- 
ducted were his men that 
"the countries where they 
came leaped for joy of them." 
It was he who, following Gus- 
tavus, created in England the 
nucleus of what was really a 
body of regular troops. 

In May, 1643, he won his 
first independent fight near 
Grantham; and though twice outnumbered, his horse rode 
through the enemy without a check. It was a notable lesson 
to see plain countrymen ride down cavaliers who were two to 
one of them ; it rings in one's ears like the story of the Swiss 
pike or the English long-bow. In July Cromwell again met 
the enemy near Gainsborough, where, in hand to hand work 
with the pistol and naked blade, he drove them off and 
sharply pursued them ; but unable to meet the larger body 
of royal infantry, he cleverly covered the retreat. Atten- 
tion was attracted to him. In August Cromwell became sec- 
ond to the earl of Manchester, who commanded ten thousand 




Cromwell. 



CROMWELL'S DISCIPLINE. 



425 




foot ; and in October — in a combat in wbich he was un- 
horsed and narrowly escaped with his life — he again defeated 
a large force of cavalry at Winceby. His career of victory 
had begun, and his activity was unceasing. His men had 
won a reputation. " As for Colonel Cromwell, he hath two 
thousand brave men, well disciplined; and no man swears 
but he pays his twelvepence ; if he be drunk he is set in 
the stocks or worse : if one calls the other Roundhead, he is 
cashiered." 

In 1644 the parliamentary forces began to gain ground, 
especially as the 
Scotch sustained 
them with twenty 
thousand men ; 
and near York, 
at Marston Moor, 
on July 2, the 
combined army 
of over twenty- 
five thousand 
men met a roy- 
alist force of 
somewhat less 
strength. 

The Roundheads were retiring from York, with Rupert on 
their trail. They drew up to meet the fiery royalist on a 
slight slope behind the White Syke Ditch, between Long 
Marston and Tockwith. Rupert marshaled his army facing 
them, on the moor, with Wilstrup wood in his rear. It took 
some hours to put the men in line. In the parliamentary 
army Cromwell commanded the left wing, of horse, with 
Leslie in reserve. He had some four thousand men ; and on 
this field he was to earn the sobriquet of Ironsides for him- 



/ 







Marston Moor. 



426 WHAT A CHARGE WAS. 

self and his God-fearing yeomen. The Scotch, nine thousand 
strong, in two long lines, held the centre, under Lord Fair- 
fax. The cavalry of the right was led by Sir Thomas 
Fairfax. The artillery was on either flank of the centre. 

Facing this array, Rupert drew up the foot, under Newcas- 
tle and King. The left, of horse, he commanded in person. 
The right was equally of horse. The artillery was near the 
foot, and there were good reserves. 

It was seven in the evening before an attack was made. 
Battle was thought to be deferred to the morrow. But an 
attack was precipitated by the parliamentary foot, a part of 
which pushed through the ditch, and got roughly handled by 
the royal artillery. The right under Fairfax followed on, 
but the bad ground somewhat unsettled the line, and, met 
half way by the hot charge of Rupert, it was broken, and 
Rupert could turn inward on the infantry centre. When 
Cromwell, on the left, saw the difficulty which the centre had 
in passing the ditch, he obliqued his wing to the left, so as 
to clear this treacherous obstacle, and, outflanking the royal 
right wing, went thundering down upon the moor. Though 
slightly wounded in the neck, he paused not in his advance. 
Striking terror into the royalist ranks as he rode on, " God 
made them as stubble to our swords," he said. Rupert's 
right was utterly routed, and the centre of foot began to feel 
that initial success was not a presage of victory. Only New- 
castle's White Coats arrested his advance. 

Cromwell's charge was not what we call a charge to-day ; 
it was an advance, with an occasional pause to fire and load ; 
but it had a concentrated energy in it which even Rupert's 
mad gallop could not equal. 

The right of each army had been destroyed. The centre 
of each was in perilous case. On whose banners would victory 
perch ? 



THE NEW MODEL. 427 

Rupert's success had unsettled his squadrons ; Cromwell's 
were in perfect. order. Returning from pursuit, the royalist 
found the commoner drawn up on the moor, astride his own 
late line of battle, ready to test one more struggle ; while 
Fairfax had collected part of his men on the edge of Wil- 
strup wood to prolong his line. Before he could re-form, 
Cromwell was upon him. There was no resisting the Iron- 
sides ; Rupert and his men took to flight. 

Four thousand men bit the dust on this field. Marston 
Moor won the north of England for the parliament. 

Cromwell was becoming the leading soldier of England. 

The successes in the north were offset by corresponding 
losses in the south of England, and there was need of the 
Self-Denying Ordinance, under which members of parliament 
who cumbered the army must resign their commands. The 
passage of this measure, which was Cromwell's work, removed 
much useless material from the army, and made room for the 
New Model reorganization, which was equally his. The three 
armies of about ten thousand men each were, during the win- 
ter of 1644-45, consolidated into a regular body of twenty-two 
thousand men, and placed under Sir Thomas Fairfax; but 
Cromwell was the moving spirit. His cavalry body, like our 
volunteers in 1864 and 1865, had long been a regular corps, 
and it now gave the leaven to the whole lump. The fact that 
this new army was also the nucleus of the Commonwealth 
towards which England was tending has here no especial 
interest for us; as an army it was a notable institution. 
The New Model was voted in February, 1645. There were 
to be fourteen thousand four hundred foot, six thousand six 
hundred horse, and one thousand dragoons ; and the whole 
body underwent a thorough drill and discipline. The effect 
was apparent as soon as it met the enemy. 

In June, 1645, Fairfax lay near Naseby awaiting Crom- 



428 



"GOD OUR STRENGTH!" 



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well, whom lie had specially desired to come and command the 
cavalry, and for whom the Self-Denying Ordinance had been 
suspended. His arrival was the sign for battle. On June 
14, at early dawn, Fairfax drew up opposite the king with 
fourteen thousand men ; the foot in the centre, the cavalry 
under Cromwell, who chose to place Ireton with five regi- 
ments and the dragoons on the left, while he retained the 
right with six regiments, — some thirty-six hundred men. 

The royal army was 
considerably less in 
numbers, and on its 
right stood Rupert, 
opposite Ireton ; on 
its left Langdale ; 
and in the centre the 
king. The composi- 
tion of both forces 
was better than at 
Marston Moor ; in 
the royal army were 
said to be fifteen hun- 
dred officers who had 
seen service, and the 
parliamentary army was well drilled and disciplined. The 
royalists had an admirable position on Dust Hill ; the Round- 
heads one near Naseby. Lantford Hedge had been lined 
with parliamentary dragoons. 

The royalists opened the action by an advance. They 
would have been wise not to leave their vantage-ground so 
On his side Cromwell, with " God our strength ! " as 



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a watch-cry, met this onset by a counter charge with his 
entire wing. The several columns of horse rode at the enemy 
with perfect confidence in their cause and in their chief, and 



DISCRETION OR DASH? 429 

** not one body of the enemy's horse which they charged but 
they routed." There was no question of the victory here. 

Not so on the left. Rupert had ridden up Mill Hill at the 
head of the royal squadrons, had charged home, and Ireton, 
stanch as he was, could not stand the impact. The charge 
here was, as at Marston, probably at a trot. It was up an 
incline, and Ireton advanced to meet him, halting to fire. 
Rupert no doubt equally halted ; and only after each rank 
had successively fired was the charge resumed. Real charges 
were not known in England at that day, — they were rare on 
the continent. Twice wounded, Ireton was captured, and 
the elated royalists pursued this routed wing almost to 
Naseby, and began to make for the parliamentary train. In 
the centre Fairfax's foot was at first driven in on the reserves 
by Charles' rapid charge ; but they rallied, and once more 
made good countenance to the foe. At the same moment 
Cromwell, having dispersed the royal left wing of horse, 
wheeled inward on the royal centre, taking it in flank and 
rear, and, leaving but one tertia standing, drove the rest 
headlong from the field. This gallant tertia, like the White 
Coats at Marston Moor, held themselves until Fairfax's own 
regiment of foot went at them with clubbed muskets ; then 
with Cromwell's sabres they were hewn in pieces. Charles 
had behaved with conspicuous gallantry. 

Rupert and Cromwell had done equal work ; but Cromwell 
had held his men in hand, as Rupert had not. A cavalry 
officer needs discretion as much as dash ; and certainly it is 
harder to teach troopers to obey the " Recall " than it is to 
follow the " Charge." This virtue in Cromwell now bore 
fruit. Rupert's men, returning from the pursuit of Ireton, 
had they been in hand, and had Cromwell, in excess of ardor, 
met them in cavalry combat alone, were quite capable of 
retrieving the day. But Rupert was fiery; Cromwell was 



430 PRESTON PANS. 

wary and fiery both. Like Gustavus he knew when to be 
prudent. Instead of trusting to his Ironsides alone, he and 
Fairfax drew up the foot, the guns and the horse in an irre- 
proachable new line, and when Charles and Rupert, who still 
hoped for a chance of mending the day, saw the solid array 
in their front, they gave up the contest and retired in confu- 
sion, chased nearly all the way to Leicester. 

The royal loss was heavy, but the killed were never known. 
There were five thousand prisoners, all the guns, standards 
and baggage, and best of all the king's private papers, — 
which sealed his political fate. His army was annihilated ; 
he never collected another. 

The likeness of Naseby to Marston Moor is marked ; and 
it was Cromwell who won both battles. 

For a year following Naseby, Cromwell and Fairfax were 
engaged in crushing the royalists in the south of England. 
In all there were some sixty small sieges, combats and 
storms, ending with the capture by assault of Bristol, Sep- 
tember 10 and 11, where Rupert was extinguished ; and of 
Basing House, October 14. 

In August, 1647, the army asserted its right to dictate to 
the parliament. In April, 1648, the second civil war broke 
out, coupled with the invasion of the Scotch. Cromwell first 
subdued the rising in Wales, and then turned to Scotland. 
In August he fought the battle of Preston Pans, in York- 
shire, the first in which he was in chief command. The 
enemy, twenty-four thousand strong, was marching south in 
a long, straggling column, without any pretense to tactical 
skill, and without scouting the country. Cromwell fell on 
them with his nine thousand men, broke their column in two, 
and for three days (17th to 20th) pursued them some thirty 
miles, cutting them down right and left and fighting them 
when they would stand. It was not a battle, but rather a 



WAS IT MASSACRE? 431 

running pursuit ; the loss of the Scotch and northern-country- 
men was enormous ; Cromwell's was trivial. This stroke 
ended the second civil war. 

Ireland had embraced the cause of Charles II. ; Scotland 
had proclaimed him king. To preserve the union, Scotland 
had to be conquered, Ireland subdued ; and to Cromwell's 
lot fell Ireland. He landed in Dublin in May, 1649, with 
nine thousand men, which he shortly increased to fifteen 
thousand. With ten thousand men he first advanced on 
Drogheda, just north of Dublin. The enemy had a garrison 
three thousand strong in this well-walled town. On Septem- 
ber 3 Cromwell reached the place, but not until the 10th did 
the batteries open. This was slow work, but when begun, 
the rest was sharply done. A formal demand of surrender 
was refused. On the 12th the place was stormed. The first 
assaidt was driven back ; Cromwell headed the second, pushed 
in and annihilated the garrison, losing less than one hundred 
men. In a military sense the work was good ; and in the 
history of the Thirty Years' War a soldier finds an answer 
to the charge of barbarity which will suffice for that era, if 
not for our days. " I forbade them to spare any that were 
in arms in the town," explains Cromwell's rule, and war is 
not a gentle art. From a religious standpoint, as the "root- 
ing out of Papists," it is not our province to examine the 
act. The similar siege and destruction of Wexford (south of 
Dublin) followed, with the cutting down of two thousand men 
and a loss of twenty Cromwellians. No doubt many non- 
combatants, presumably some women, perished ; but this was 
an unfortunate incident of the capture. During the winter 
Cromwell overran the land. At Clonmel he lost heavily in 
storming the town ; elsewhere his losses were curiously small. 
These lessons sufficed. Though the revolution in Ireland 
lasted three years more, there was little of it. 



432 



NARROW PURITANISM. 



No doubt both these so-called massacres are in a sense 
as inexcusable as that of Magdeburg, where forty thousand 
souls were cut off in one day ; but there was in neither the 
same treachery. The rule was plain : " Refusing conditions 
seasonably offered, all were put to the sword." It was the 
way of the era, to free the world from which Gustavus had 
done so much. The fact that priests were not spared by 
Cromwell speaks less for the Briton than the leniency of 
Gustavus does for the Swede. 

It was after this campaign that so many, it is said forty 







WW'' 1 



Dunbar. 



thousand, Irishmen passed as professional soldiers to the con- 
tinent. 

As a mere soldier Cromwell had done well in Ireland, and 
with no great means ; as man and soldier, he would have 
done better to heed the lessons of Gustavus. His conduct 
was the very essence of narrow Puritanism. But he had 
intentionally cut down none but men in arms. 

Fairfax resigned ; Cromwell retired to England, and was 
made captain-general ; and in July he crossed the Scotch 
border with sixteen thousand men. Leslie was in command 
of the Scotch army, some twenty-two thousand strong, and 



A SHARP HOUR'S WORK. 433 

sought to tire out Cromwell by a Fabian policy. This all 
but succeeded, and, worn by wet and hunger, the English 
army retired to Dunbar, to be near the fleet. The city was 
on a sort of peninsula, a mile and a half wide, and the only 
road to it ran over hills otherwise inaccessible. As they 
approached Dunbar, Leslie followed and held the road. He 
had trapped Cromwell ; and drawing up along the Lammer- 
muir hills, he cut him off from the only road to England. 
Cromwell's " poor, scattered, hungry, discouraged army " of 
eleven thousand men was in sad case, with twice their 
number of well-provisioned Scots in their front. Had Leslie 
kept to his Fabian strategy, it might have gone hard with 
Cromwell. But fearing that the English might embark and 
escape him, he pushed out his right wing to the coast, hoping 
to surround and cut them to pieces in the operation. 

Leslie's left lay on the hills, with an impassable ravine in 
its front, but the brook which ran through the ravine to the 
sea broadened out lower down so as to be easily fordable. 
Cromwell was not slow to see the lapse, and to grasp its possi- 
bilities ; he made his plans accordingly. On September 3, 
1650, before daylight, he got his men under arms, put his 
guns in a position to keep up a heavy fire on, and thus pre- 
vent Leslie's left from deploying, and marshaled his army 
to attack his right in force. By 6 A. M. Cromwell advanced ; 
the artillery fire sufficed to prevent the Scotch left from 
forming line and crossing the ravine in their front, and thus 
covered the disgarnishing of his own right; and meanwhile 
Cromwell fell lustily upon Leslie's right wing. Bar an 
initial check which was quickly repaired, the onset met with 
entire success. Cromwell sent a column around by the sea to 
take the Scotch line in flank, and within an hour the enemy 
was fully routed. The right flank was crushed, and when 
the left finally came to its support, it was but to be ridden 



434 



DISPARITY OF LOSSES. 



down by its own flying squadrons, and to partake of their 
demoralization. The whole Scotch army fled in dismay. 
The victory was completed while singing " O praise the Lord, 
all ye nations." 

There were three thousand Scotch slain, ten thousand 
taken, with all the baggage and material. Of the English 
only two officers and twenty men had fallen. It had been 

discipline which had 
won over numbers, 
and undoubted cour- 
age. The battle 
leads one to over- 
look the faults in 
strategy preceding 
it. Edinburgh and 
Glasgow surren- 
dered. 

Next year, after 
some operations in 
Scotland, Charles 
II. made a bold 
dash for England. 
Nothing abashed, 
Cromwell followed 
him. Charles found little of the support he anticipated, and 
reached Worcester with not over fifteen thousand men, while 
at the end of August Cromwell arrived with thirty thousand. 
Charles took up a position in the angle made by the Teme 
as it runs into the Severn. Just above, on the left bank of 
the Severn, lay Worcester, well fortified, with the Royal Fort 
on the southeast corner, and a bridge across the river ; and 
Charles also held in force the bridge over the Teme and the 
road leading 1 to the Malvern Hills. The Severn bridge lower 




Worcester. 



ABLE TACTICS. 435 

down, at Upton, he destroyed. His Worcester bridge ena- 
bled him to cross quickly to and fro, and here he prepared to 
play his last card, expecting that Cromwell would assault 
from the north. 

With his excess of troops Cromwell could safely divide 
his forces, having in this a manifest advantage. He closed 
in the town, set up his batteries on the hill on the east of the 
river, and cannonaded it for nearly a week, waiting for his 
lucky day, the 3d of September, but meanwhile drawing his 
lines in more and more. He had sent Fleetwood down the 
Severn to cross and hold the enemy to the Teme. 

On the day set Fleetwood attacked the Teme bridge, and 
under cover of this attack two bridges were thrown, one 
across the Severn and one across the Teme, close together, 
thus taking Charles' triangle in reverse, and obliging him to 
withdraw into Worcester, which he did in the afternoon. 
From here he broke out on Cromwell's force on the left bank, 
and for a moment gained success ; but the bridges enabled 
Cromwell to reinforce this wing in season to prevent disas- 
ter ; and the royalists were forced within walls, after a hearty 
struggle. The Eoyal Fort was taken by storm, and by eight 
in the evening the city gates were captured. The rest was 
mere massacre ; three thousand Scotch were killed, ten thou- 
sand taken. Cromwell lost two hundred men. 

The tactics of this battle was admirable. It was a fit clos- 
ing to Cromwell's military career, which had lasted from his 
forty-third to his fifty-second year. 

Judged by success, Cromwell was a greater soldier than 
if gauged by the rules of the art. He was not a skillful 
strategist ; in tactics, within a certain limit, he was admira- 
ble. Following immediately in the steps of the great conti- 
nental captain, he organized and disciplined a wonderful 
army, which none of the less well-drilled royalists could ever 



436 CROMWELL NOT A GREAT CAPTAIN. 

resist. The forces lie opposed never stood his blows long ; 
and judged by opposition, he does not stand high. His 
losses in storming strong places, except at Clonmel, were 
always small, testifying to poor defense. At Preston Pans 
he lost fifty men ; at Dunbar twenty-two ; at Worcester two 
hundred. While mere losses do not necessarily measure the 
general, they must still be considered in the light of what he 
had to oppose him. 

That Cromwell was one of the great men of history is 
undeniable ; that for England he wrought as almost no other 
of its rulers ever did is but a truism ; that, tried by the 
highest standard, he may be called a great general is less 
certain. He was what some other truly great men (Wash- 
ington, for instance) have been, eminent in arms ; but that 
he deserves to rank with the great captains no capable critic 
familiar with their history has ever pretended ; that he may 
rank with the second class — with Turenne, Marlborough, 
Eugene and their fellows — can scarcely be allowed. That 
he did such splendid work for England came from his excep- 
tional equipment of character and intelligence. 

He was a worthy follower and, like all the rest of Europe, 
an imitator of Gustavus Adolphus. 




Pistol Sword. (16th Century 



XXXIV. 

TURENNE. 1634 TO AUGUST, 1644. 

Three sets of great soldiers exist in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- 
ries : those grouped about Gustavus, about Conde" and Turenne, and about 
Eugene and Marlborough. It was they who created the modern art of war, 
and by narrating their deeds we are writing its history. We have dealt with 
the first set, and now come to the second. After the death of Gustavus, the 
Swedish generals whom he had trained — Bernard, Bane"r, Torstenson — in 
connection with France conducted brilliant campaigns over all Germany ; but, 
lacking the solid method of their great chief, their work had no result. In 
1646 the last of these generals, Wrangel, operated successfully with Turenne. 
Born in 1611, Turenne first saw service in Holland with his uncle, the prince 
of Orange, proved himself gallant and intelligent, and rapidly rose in his pro- 
fession, under successive commanders on the Rhine and in Italy. His first 
independent campaign as field-marshal, in 1644, opened with a successful raid 
across the Bhine and towards the upper Danube ; this was followed by a march 
on Freiburg, which was blockaded by the Bavarian Mercy. Turenne at- 
tempted to relieve it, but his army, which had been given over to him in the 
worst order, proved weak, and his operation failed. Conde - was sent to his aid. 

In the military era to which Gustavus Adolphus by right 
of eminence and priority gives the title, there are three peri- 
ods into which our subject-matter may conveniently be divided. 
The first includes those generals who were grouped about 
Gustavus, and the events in which they enacted their brilliant 
parts. The second includes those generals who were on the 
stage when Turenne conducted his campaigns in the Thirty 
Years' War, the War with Spain, and the Wars in the Nether- 
lands. The third period includes the generals who acted with 
or against Prince Eugene and Marlborough in the War of 
the Spanish Succession. By narrating the military life of Gus- 



438 SWEDISH-FRENCH PHASE. 

tavus, we have already covered the first period. We can best 
make clear the second and third periods not by an attempt to 
narrate all the war history of their times, but by keeping more 
or less closely to the masterly campaigns of Turenne, Prince 
Eugene and Marlborough themselves ; to the skillful work 
of Conde, Vendome, Villars and Montecuculi; to the cam- 
paigns of Luxemburg and Catinat ; for it was the novel and 
useful elements in what they did which so distinctly enriched 
the art of war, and which prepared the way for that greater 
teacher, Frederick, king of Prussia. If we depart from the 
course thus prescribed by this History of the Art of War, 
it will be but to notice such a splendid event as the defense 
of Vienna by John Sobieski, or such an erratic genius as 
Charles XII. 

In this design, space limits us to the narration of a portion 
only of the campaigns of these able captains. Part must be 
omitted ; another part can be sketched with but few strokes ; 
to still other parts more time will be allotted ; and from the 
ground thus covered we shall conceive a fairly good idea of 
what was done by them towards developing the art of which 
they were past masters. 

From 1635 to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Thirty 
Years' War was in what is called the French, or the Swedish- 
French phase. Because of Gustavus' death, or of the defec- 
tion of Saxony, Brandenburg and other late Protestant allies, 
the Swedes were none the less intent on carrying out the 
purpose bequeathed to them by their great monarch, though 
indeed Sweden was compelled to fight if she would preserve 
her " bastion " on the Baltic. France would make no peace 
on terms acceptable to the empire, and so the war went on. 
The north German potentates were to an extent eliminated 
from the problem, and the theatre of war was somewhat 
changed even as the ideal of the war was modified, but Riche- 



BANER AND TORSTENSON. 439 

lieu and Oxenstiern never wavered. By the battle of Nord- 
lingen Bernard had forfeited his duchy of Franconia, and he 
was glad to serve under the aegis of France, with the hope of 
carving for himself a new duchy out of Alsatia. On his death 
in 1639 the French retained his army. 

After the battle of Nordlingen, the operations of the Prot- 
estant allies had been mainly in two bodies. The Swedes 
under Baner, based on Gustavus' bastion, had manoeuvred 
toward Saxony and Bohemia, while the army of Bernard, 
properly a part of the Swedish forces, but entertained by 
France, had operated on the Rhine, in Alsatia and Swabia, 
sometimes in connection with the French armies, sometimes 
alone. 

In 1638 Bernard crossed the Rhine above Basle, captured 
many towns in Swabia, besieged Breisach and beat off several 
imperial armies of relief. His other campaigns were rather 
weak. 

The operations of Baner from 1636 to 1641 showed great 
energy ; but his boldness was misplaced, and despite many 
fine forays into Saxony and Bohemia, and even as far as 
Ratisbon, he was invariably forced back to Pomerania by the 
larger imperial armies and their allies. No victories, and he 
won some splendid ones, as at Wittstock, secured him a foot- 
hold beyond the bastion, which Wrangel meanwhile defended. 
In 1641 Baner died and Torstenson assumed command. 

Extending over the entire territory from Denmark to Vi- 
enna, the latter's manoeuvres were in a high degree bold and 
brilliant ; but they were quite without result. In 1642 he 
won a victory at Leipsic ; again in 1644 at Juterbok, and in 
1645 at Jankowitz, over the imperial troops; but though 
much which is admirable characterized his work ; though he 
markedly aided the operations of the French, his campaigns 
cannot be pronounced successful. Like that of the others, 



440 



CONTRASTED WITH GUSTAVUS. 



his work lacked the solidity shown by his king and teacher. 
As a lieutenant, especially as an artillerist, he had been be- 
yond criticism. 

This want of permanent success by the generals he had 
brought up, and who had no superiors at the time, emphasizes 
the value of Gustavus' own careful method. His lieutenants 
covered the same ground which he had won ; they marched 
as far ; they won victories apparently as splendid ; they had 
opponents less able than Tilly, or Wallenstein, or Pappen- 
heim ; and yet the result of all they did was naught, or at 

best they merely kept the ball in 
play until exhaustion put an end 
to the long drawn out match of 
nations. 

In 1646 Field - Marshal 
Wrangel, the last of Gustavus' 
lieutenants, commanded the 
Swedish army, and worked in 
connection with Turenne. In- 
spired by the great Frenchman, 
their joint campaigns were quite 
out of the ordinary. 

Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, 
Viscount of Turenne, was born in 1611 in Sedan, son of the 
Duke of Bouillon and Elizabeth, daughter of William of 
Orange. He was a sickly youth, and up to his twelfth year 
gave no promise of ability. But his father, who superin- 
tended his education, roused the lad's latent ambition, and 
he finally excelled in his studies. He was educated a Prot- 
estant. Like Gustavus Adolphus, he was fond of reading 
the heroic deeds of Alexander the Great in Quintus Curtius, 
and from these romantic pages he imbibed his early love 
of war, then as alwavs the noblest of professions, but then 




Turenne. 



TUEENNE'S EARLY TRAINING. 441 

more highly considered, as it was more essential, than it is 
to-day. 

When twelve years old, his father died, his elder brother 
inherited the title, and Henri was sent to his uncle, Prince 
Maurice of Orange. But soon this guardian also died ; and 
that Henri was thrown on his own resources contributed 
much to develop his extraordinary character. Entering the 
Dutch service as a private in 1625, he rose within a year 
to a captaincy, and, especially by distinguished conduct at 
Herzogenbusch in 1629, earned the respect and approbation 
of Prince Maurice, who then said of him that he would 
become a great leader. When nineteen, he entered the 
French service as colonel, and in command of his regiment, 
at the siege of La Motte, in 1634, he so approved himself 
for bravery that he was promoted on the spot to be marechal 
de camp. The next year he served under Cardinal La Val- 
lette, who went to the aid of the Swedes and, in connection 
with Duke Bernard, relieved Mainz. On the retreat of the 
army Turenne was noted for his untiring activity and his 
intelligence in procuring rations. In 1636 La Vallette made 
special request for Turenne's services, and at the siege of 
Zabern, while Bernard, after two failures, captured the upper 
town, Turenne stormed and took the lower town and citadel, 
doing wonders of courage and receiving a serious wound. 
Towards the end of the campaign he forced Gallas from 
Tranche Comte in a rapid, dashing style, defeating his vet- 
eran opponent near Jussey, following him up and taking 
many prisoners. When later Gallas endeavored to raise the 
siege which Bernard was conducting against Joinville, Turenne 
intercepted and drove him back across the Rhine. 

In 1637 Turenne took part in La Vallette's campaign in 
Picardy, and during the rainy season at Landrecies, when the 
trenches were constantly full of water, was again prominent 



442 AN UNPARALLELED SIEGE. 

in rationing the troops, working incessantly himself and en- 
during privation cheerfully. This solicitude for the welfare 
of his men was a trait which distinguished Turenne all 
through life. Demanding much of the soldiers, he devoted 
all his efforts to their good ; he was singularly careful of their 
health, — sometimes to his own strategic loss ; and he never 
for a moment thought of self. His men were devoted to him. 

At the age of twenty-six, for the capture of the castle of 
Solre in the Hennegau, and the heroic defense of the fortified 
camp at Maubeuge, Turenne was given his step as lieutenant- 
general, and as such in 1638 led reinforcements to Bernard 
at the siege of Breisach. During the eight months of this 
siege, he fought in three combats and three general engage- 
ments ; and a long attack of intermittent fever did not abate 
his energy. Finally, he stormed and captured an isolated 
fort which was a key-point of the investment, and the fortress 
of Breisach surrendered. 

Sent to Lombardy in the spring of 1639, to serve in the 
army of Count Harcourt, Turenne covered the siege of 
Chieri, and fought successfully at La Route. Next year he 
pursued the enemy, after the siege of Casale, and captured 
many trophies and all his train. Hereupon he induced Har- 
court to invest Turin, where Prince Thomas of Savoy was in 
command, while the citadel was held by a French garrison. 
Singularly, General Lleganes now came up and blockaded 
Harcourt. Thus the French force in the citadel was besieged 
by the prince of Savoy, he by Harcourt, and the latter by 
Lleganes, — a quite unparalleled situation. Lleganes was 
driven off ; Turenne, though again wounded, victualed Har- 
court by bringing a large convoy safely from Pignerol ; and 
shortly thereupon Turin surrendered. Harcourt was called 
to Paris, and during his absence, Turenne captured Moncalvo 
and besieged Ivrea,, which surrendered to Harcourt on his 



WHAT TURENNE HAD LEARNED. 443 

return. Prince Thomas now entered the French service ; 
Turenne was appointed to the command, under him, of the 
army in Italy ; and recognizing the remarkable qualities of 
the young general, the prince intrusted him with the main 
direction. To induce the Spaniards to evacuate Piedmont, 
Turenne made apparent arrangements to transfer operations 
to the duchy of Milan, and laid siege to Alexandria, which 
he blockaded, so disposing his troops as purposely to leave 
a gap in his lines. Through this gap the Spanish general, at 
the head of almost the entire garrison of the fortress of Trino, 
essayed to relieve Alexandria. Allowing this to take place, 
Turenne sharply turned on Trino and captured it, for which 
skillful feat of arms he was made field-marshal, and here, 
after seventeen years' active apprenticeship, ended his ser- 
vices under other generals. 

Turenne had learned his trade, was well equipped for a 
leader, and understood how to distinguish the true from the 
false in military situations. In his memoirs he has said that 
he owed certain qualities to those under whom he served. 
From the prince of Orange he had learned how to choose 
positions, the besieger's art, and especially how to draw up 
plans, to maturely consider them, and then to alter nothing 
so long as it was possible to carry them out. From Bernard 
he had learned not to be blinded by success nor cast down 
by failure ; neither to blame himself nor to forgive his own 
errors, but to correct these and strive to change ill fortune. 
From La Vallette he had learned the importance of keeping 
in touch with his soldiers in the field. From Harcourt he 
had learned that mature consideration of the problem, fol- 
lowed by unceasing activity and rapid decision, were the 
surest elements of success in war. 

We know more of the detail of Turenne's campaigns than 
we do of those of Gustavus, — indeed, we have the memoirs 



444 TURENNE' S VALUE. 

of the French marshal, — and there is a marked difference in 
the manner in which they wrought. In narrating the work 
of the king we are dealing with immense issues, — issues on 
which the whole civilized world depended for its future prog- 
ress and welfare ; in narrating that of Turenne we deal with 
the operations of bodies which occupied a position of less 
prominence on the theatre of war, and form a less important 
page in history. But Turenne, though deprived of the oppor- 
tunity of working on so broad a field, was yet a soldier with 
few rivals ; and many of his lesser operations deserve the 
closest study. War is wont to depend as much on smaller 
work well done as on the labors of the giants ; and to few 
generals is it allotted to expend their efforts on the broadest 
fields. Like Stonewall Jackson or Sheridan in our own civil 
war, Turenne, in his early campaigns, was not in command 
of large-sized armies ; nor indeed was he often allowed that 
complete independence of action which breeds the highest 
results ; but whether in command of an army corps or in 
command of an army, he was always solid, original and bril- 
liant. No better pattern exists in military annals ; no captain 
has done more uniformly excellent work. If we were to select 
the material we possess of any one soldier's campaigns from 
which to study all the operations of war, from the minor to 
the grand, it is perhaps to those of Turenne we might best 
turn. It must be, moreover, borne in mind that he was the 
first great soldier to succeed Gustavus, and that as such he 
was called on to create much of what he did. Turenne is 
one of the most sagacious, profound of our teachers. 

As an independent commander, Turenne began his cam- 
paigns towards the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1644 to 
1648. His first army, as field-marshal, was given over to 
him in the worst possible condition. It was the army of the 
upper Rhine, which had been beaten at Tuttlingen, had lost 



PROPORTION OF CAVALRY. 445 

the bulk of its officers, six or seven thousand prisoners, 
together with all its artillery and baggage ; and had made its 
way, with difficulty and in utter disorder, back to Alsatia. 
This force, as a mark of confidence, was intrusted by Cardi- 
nal Mazarin to Turenne for the purpose of reorganization ; 
but it was a sad compliment to pay him. Had he not already 
won a name for exceptional ability, he would scarce have 
been awarded so onerous a duty. 

In December, 1643, though not long back from the siege 
of Trino, and still invalided, Turenne undertook his thank- 
less task, and joined the army at Colmar ; and because Alsatia 
had been devastated in January, he went into his winter-quar- 
ters in the mountains of Lorraine, and began his labor by 
salutary and sensible methods. The French government was 
illiberal in moneys, and Turenne was compelled to largely 
use his own capital and credit, which happily were excellent. 
His cavalry became good, but though his infantry could not 
be put on an equal footing, in four months he was able to 
take the field. 

It will be noted, in all the wars of the period upon which 
we are now entering, that the cavalry was the principal arm, 
almost always equal, often superior, in numbers to the infan- 
try, and thus, in the line of battle or in other operations, 
occupying a space and a position unduly prominent. It was 
a final flickering up again of the mediaeval idea of the supe- 
rior efficiency of mounted men, which Gustavus had proved 
to be erroneous, and to which Frederick, with the wonder- 
ful battalions drilled by his father, gave the death-blow at 
Mollwitz. 

The enemy had lain quietly in winter - quarters, doing 
nothing except to besiege Ueberlingen, which fell in May. 
Early in the same month Turenne assembled his army in 
Alsatia, and, crossing the Rhine near Breisach with a part of 



446 



RAID ON BLACK FOREST. 




The Rhine Country. 



his troops, marched toward the sources of the Danube. Hear- 
ing in the hills of the Black Forest of a body of two thou- 
sand raiding Bavarian horse, he hunted it up ; and attacking 



RESISTANCE OF SMALL GARRISONS. 447 

it smartly, beat it and captured many officers and four hun- 
dred men. The rest retired on the Bavarian army, which 
had captured Hohentwiel. This little foray instructed and 
heightened the spirits of the French army, which then 
returned to Lorraine, and enabled Turenne to gauge its 
quality. 

The enemy had rested in good winter-quarters, and by 
enlisting a number of the French prisoners taken at Tutt- 
lingen, had materially increased their strength. In the month 
of July Freiburg in the Breisgau was blockaded by the Ba- 
varian field-marshal, Mercy, who had marched on the place 
through the Black Forest. The garrison had been increased 
to eight hundred men, which then was beyond the usual size. 
Artillery at that time was not powerful, and the belief in 
works was greater, — or rather the disinclination to attack 
them was so. In the siege of a place, the inhabitants were 
apt to serve on the walls as well as the garrison ; and many 
defenses of towns in which even big breaches had been made 
were long and gallant in the extreme. The smallness of the 
garrisons of important places, and the stanch resistance of 
which they were capable, strike us to-day with wonder. 

Freiburg lies at the foot of the mountains of that rugged 
section of country known as the Black Forest, at a place 
where they inclose the alluvial plain of the Rhine in the form 
of a crescent. This inclosed level has high and inaccessible 
rocks on the right as you come from Breisach, and at that 
day had a wooded swamp on the left ; it was approachable 
from the Rhine by only a single road through a defile which 
ran several miles between the hills, and might be easily 
defended. 

Turenne had a short five thousand foot and the same num- 
ber of horse, with twenty guns. He again crossed the Rhine 
at Breisach, and moved on Freiburg, hoping to surprise 



448 



DISGRACEFUL RETREAT. 



Mercy and to raise the blockade. The enemy had sent out a 
large foraging party, and did not learn of the approach of 
the French until the latter came within six miles of them, 
when, recalling his foragers, Mercy prepared for action. 
Turenne reconnoitred the enemy's position, and sought to 
occupy a hill near Uf hauf en which commanded it ; but the 
infantry sent forward proved inefficient, and, owing to the 
cowardice of two color-bearers, got panic-stricken and fell 
back in disorder from the hill, which at the moment was held 







Freiburg. 



by only a picket of twenty men. The enemy at once rein- 
forced the picket, but did not follow the French. Turenne 
remained on the field some time, during which a cavalry 
combat fell out to his advantage ; but his plan of a surprise 
having failed, the dominant force of the enemy induced him 
to retire after these slight engagements, and Freiburg surren- 
dered to Mercy, being, however, allowed the honors of war. 

This failure was perhaps less the fault of Turenne than of 
the miserable condition of his troops, especially the infantry. 



NAPOLEON'S CRITICISM. 



449 



And yet this same infantry, as we shall see, shortly after 
stood decimation under which even veterans might have 
quailed. Napoleon casts a slur at Turenne for this opera- 
tion, which was, indeed, rather pitiable, and suggests that he 
should have taken up a strong position and gone into camp, 
so as to annoy the enemy. But Turenne probably saw after 
the panic that he could not count on his foot to serve him 
well at this juncture, and preferred to harden it by minor 
manoeuvres before encountering larger forces. Merely to sit 
down opposite an enemy he could not attack was of no util- 
ity. The news of the backset having reached Versailles, he 
was, morever, ordered by the court to suspend operations 
until he could be reinforced by the duke of Enghien, — later 
the Great Conde, — who had leaped into fame by the victory 
of Rocroy, and despite his youth was deemed able to accom- 
plish all things. 




French Halberdiers. 
(15th Century.) 



XXXV. 



CONDE AT ROCROY. MAY 19, 1643. 

Bobn in 1621, Conde" distinguished himself in his nineteenth year at the 
siege of Arras, and his royal connections rapidly advanced him. In 1648, in 
command of the northern frontier of France, he advanced to Rocroy, besieged 
by the Spaniards under Marshal Melos, and attacked the enemy despite marked 
difficulties. With his right wing of cavalry he destroyed the Spanish left, and 
turned in on the infantry centre under Fuentes. The Spanish right having 
meanwhile broken up the French left, Conde" rode with his cavalry column com- 
pletely around the Spanish army, and took the successful enemy in the rear. 
He thus dispersed both cavalry wings of the Spaniards. But the centre of foot 
resisted so stanchly that the victory was dearly bought and at grave risk. As 
the work of a young commander, this was a doubly famous victory ; and it at 
once made Conde" the national hero. 

Louis of Bourbon, duke of Enghien, and, on his father's 
death, prince of Conde, was born September 8, 1621. He 

was early, and all through life, 
noted for diligent application to 
literature and arts, and ranked 
as a man of fine culture and 
broad ability. He distinguished 
himself in war as early as his 
nineteenth year, at the siege of 
Arras ; and two years later, in 
the campaign of Roussillon, won 
commendation for skill and brav- 
ery. His royal connections yield- 
ed him exceptional opportunities, 
and in 1643 he was given charge 
of the defense of the northern frontier of France. 




Conde" at Rocroy. 



ADVANCE UNOPPOSED. 451 

The preceding campaign here had been disastrous ; a French 
army had been destroyed at Honnecourt, and Field-Marshal 
Melos, governor-general of the Low Countries, who stood at 
the head of a splendid army of twenty-seven thousand men, 
already imagined Picardy and Champagne to lie at his feet. 
Conde, as we will continue to call him, though he remained 
duke of Enghien until 1646, was able to concentrate forces 
amounting to twenty-three thousand men, — of which seven 
thousand were horse, — and had under him Marshals de 
l'Hopital and Gassion. The former had been placed at his 
side to check any possible excess of youthful ardor, a thing 
which he was, however, unable to do. 

Melos had opened his trenches before Roeroy. The town lay 
in a plain then covered with woods and marshes, — it is to-day 
full of forests, — and was approachable only through long and 
narrow paths, except from the Champagne side, where the 
woods were less extensive. In a military sense it was unap- 
proachable. Melos had occupied all the avenues, and had 
bodies of scouts patrolling the country on every side. Conde 
had a strong instinct for battle. He felt that to destroy the 
enemy was the way to secure the safety of France ; he deter- 
mined to relieve Roeroy, even at the risk of fighting ; and in 
order to reach the three or four miles wide plain near the 
city, where alone there was room to manoeuvre, at the head of 
a body of cavalry, suitably sustained by foot, he forced his 
way through the woods early on May 18, took possession of a 
height at the outlet to cover his columns, and successfully 
debouched into the open. Melos did not oppose his passage 
because he himself desired battle, was not averse to winning 
a victory when the enemy had no chance of retreat, and 
believed the French army to be much smaller than it actu- 
ally was. He was well seconded by Field-Marshal Fuentes, 
a veteran of experience and proven courage. 



452 



IMITATION OF GUSTAVUS. 



Conde had fully matured his plans the day before, had 
issued exact instructions, and the troops all filed into line in 
the prescribed order. He himself commanded the right with 
Gassion as his second ; de l'Hopital commanded the left ; 
d'Espenant was at the head of the foot (corps de bataille) in 




odos 



Battle of Rocroy. 

the centre ; and there was a reserve under Marshal Sirot. 
Between each two squadrons was a body of fifty "com- 
manded musketeers," — Gustavus' old disposition, so success- 
ful at Breitenfeld and Liitzen. Dragoons and light cavalry 
were on either flank, and the baggage had been sent to 
Aubenton. 

Melos, who harbored no doubt that with his veteran army 



SLOW MARSHALING. 453 

he could beat the unseasoned French troops of his young and 
inexperienced opponent, drew up his army, but with the 
sensible belief that on the day of battle you should have 
in line every available man, he sent word to General Beck, 
who lay a day's march to the rear, to come up rapidly with 
his six thousand men. Melos' line occupied a height facing 
that on which Conde had marshaled his army. The duke 
of Albuquerque commanded the left, and he himself the 
right. Count Fuentes, whom many years of war had crippled 
so that he could not ride, like Wallenstein at Liitzen, led 
the famous Spanish infantry from a litter. 

To marshal an army was, in the seventeenth century, an 
affair of time ; and it was six o'clock in the evening before 
the rival generals were ready to join issue, though an artil- 
lery duel had been going on all day, rather to the disadvantage 
of the French, who lost three hundred men ; for the Spanish 
batteries were the better. Even though late, Conde was about 
to attack, and, accompanied by de l'Hopital, was busy with 
his final dispositions, when La Ferte, inspired by the foolish 
idea of making a brilliant coup and of throwing a force into 
Eocroy, left his post in the line at the head of the left wing 
cavalry, and enabled Melos, who had a keen military eye, to 
sharply advance his own right. Had the Spaniard pushed 
boldly in, the day would have been beyond a peradven- 
ture his ; but he did not do so ; La Ferte was recalled, 
and the gap he had made was patched up. Daylight had 
gone, however, and Conde reluctantly put off his attack to the 
morrow. 

Between the two armies lay lower land, and here, in the 
underbrush opposite the Spanish left, Melos had hidden a 
thousand musketeers, hoping to fall on Conde's flank when 
he should lead out his right wing of cavalry ; but Conde had 
got wind of the ambush, and his first act in the morning twi- 



454 "NOT LOST, SIRS!" 

light was to fall on these men and cut them to pieces ; after 
which he sent Gassion forward and well to the right with the 
first line of his cavalry to attack Albuquerque in flank, while 
he himself with the remainder should attack in front. His 
line of retreat lay back of his right, and this he must protect 
at all hazards. Surprised at the manoeuvre, Albuquerque 
nevertheless detached eight squadrons against Gassion, and 
prepared to receive Conde with a firm foot. But the French 
charge was too fiery ; Conde drove in upon the enemy with 
the fury of hot-headed youth; his horsemen followed the 
impulse of the prince of the blood ; Albuquerque's cavalry 
was ridden down and fled ; and Conde sent Gassion in pur- 
suit, while he himself turned in on the flank of Melos' infantry, 
in which he wrought fearful carnage among the Germans, 
Walloons and Italians. On the French right the success 
was beyond all expectation. Victory seemed near at hand. 

Not so on the left. Marshal de l'Hopital had started his 
cavalry out at too fast a gait, so that it reached the enemy 
winded and in some disorder; Melos met it by a sharp 
counter-charge and drove it back ; de l'Hopital was wounded, 
and Melos pursued his advantage just as Conde had done 
his, fell on the flank of part of the French infantry, cut it to 
pieces, captured La Ferte and all his guns, and actually 
reached the reserve. The enemy had purchased a promise of 
victory with equal ease as Conde. The case looked desperate. 
The merest accident would turn the scale either way. Sirot, 
who led the reserve, was urged by many of the runaways to 
retire, for the battle was lost, said they. " Not lost, sirs ; for 
Sirot and his companions have not yet fought ! " replied the 
brave officer, and manfully held his ground. It was an even 
chance on either side. 

But Conde, learning of the disaster to his own left, now did 
what only the true instinct of war, the clear soldier's eye and 



A SUPERB GALLOP. 455 

heart, could dictate. If he did not win with the squadrons he 
personally led, he saw that the battle was lost ; and with the 
energy of a Coenus or a Hasdrubal he spurred on, and still on, 
back of the Spanish foot, round to the enemy's right, out to 
the front, took Melos' victorious cavalry in the rear, sent it 
whirling back in the wake of the fugitives of the left, recap- 
tured La Ferte and the guns, and took every one of the 
Spanish batteries on that flank. Few such superb rides have 
been made by any squadrons. Gassion ably seconded his 
chief by completing the rout, and nothing remained on the 
field except the splendid old Spanish infantry, which, like 
Father Tilly's Walloons at Breitenfeld, refused to decamp. 
It had been confronted by d'Espenant, who, however, with 
his newer battalions, had not dared to come hand to hand 
with the veterans. These, grouped with teeth set around 
their guns, and in the midst of panic and disaster, resolved to 
pluck victory from defeat, or to die where they stood. Who 
knew what so brave a body might yet accomplish ? 

Beck was near at hand with six thousand fresh troops, — a 
dreaded factor in the uncertain problem. Detaching gallant 
Gassion with his handful of cavalry to hold him in check at 
every hazard, Conde himself prepared to beat down the stern 
resistance of the Spanish battalions. He had now again 
taken his place in line after having made an entire circuit 
of the Spanish centre and having destroyed both its wings. 
Reassembling his squadrons, with the superb battle decision 
which always characterized him, and inspiring them with his 
own undaunted courage, he drove them home upon the Span- 
ish foot. But he had not counted on what these men could 
do, nor on the iron will of old Fuentes. Masking his guns 
by a thin line of foot, and reserving his fire until the French 
squadrons were within fifty paces, the veteran uncovered his 
batteries, and opened upon the approaching horsemen his 



456 A BATH OF BLOOD. 

eighteen pieces charged with grape, while the line gave so 
withering a volley that even Conde's men, flushed with vic- 
tory and their prince's ardor, could not face the hail, but fell 
back in grave disorder. Had Fuentes possessed but a few 
squadrons, he might still have wrested a victory from the 
French. Not a Spanish sabre was on the field. Every man 
had fled. 

A second time the prince headed his horse, a second time 
he was thrown back. A third charge was no more successful ; 
the crisis was doubtful. Fuentes, from his litter, could watch 
with grim satisfaction his youthful antagonist breaking his 
lines on the Spanish square as the waves break on the rock. 
He had not lost yet. 

But at this moment the reserve under Sirot came up. 
Conde changed his tactics to a less reckless one, as he should 
have sooner done: with the gendarmes he rode round the 
flanks of the Spanish foot, and put his infantry in in front. 
Fuentes saw himself surrounded by superior numbers on all 
sides. This was decisive. The day was irretrievably gone. 
To save a remnant of his men, the old Spaniard made an 
attempt to surrender ; but the French either understood not 
or could not be restrained, and a frightful butchery ensued. 
The battle of Rocroy ended in a bath of blood ; and Beck, 
learning that there was no more Spanish army left to rescue, 
came to a right-about and precipitately retired, leaving be- 
hind some guns. 

The Spanish losses were immense. Out of eighteen thou- 
sand foot, nine thousand are said to have been killed where 
they stood, and seven thousand were taken, with all the guns, 
three hundred flags and immense booty. Splendid Fuentes 
died where he had fought. The French losses are stated at 
only two thousand killed and wounded. If the figures are 
correct, it was but a modern sample of the butchery usual in 



THE HERO OF FRANCE. 



457 



ancient warfare. "How many are you?" asked a French of 
a Spanish officer after the battle. " Count the dead and the 
prisoners, — they are all ! " was the answer. 

After this magnificent victory, in which Conde exhibited 
singular courage and energy, and proved himself a born 
battle - captain, he took Diedenhofen (Thionville) on the 
Moselle and returned to Paris, where he was the hero of the 
hour. His princely blood, coupled to marked courage and 
ability, made too rare a combination to be overlooked. 




French Musketeer. (1647.) 



XXXVI. 

FREIBURG. AUGUST, 1644. 

After Turenne's failure at Freiburg, Conde^ who was believed equal to any 
emergency, was sent with ten thousand men to reinforce him and take com- 
mand. On his arrival the two generals attacked Mercy in his works, Turenne 
by a long circuit around his left flank. The fighting was prolonged and bloody, 
and the French were divided ; but Mercy withdrew to another position, and 
allowed them to reunite. Two days after, a second and rather miscalculated 
attack was made on the new works and was equally sanguinary ; and again 
Mercy withdrew. After four days a turning manoeuvre was attempted; but 
Mercy retired definitively. The French commander then marched to Philips- 
burg, and after a handsome siege captured it ; upon which Turenne moved 
down the Rhine, taking Speyer, Worms, Mainz and other towns; and later 
Landau. Conde' returned to France, and Turenne resumed his position at 
Philipsburg. The two French generals were warm friends throughout life ; 
neither was jealous of the other ; each was active in his colleague's interests. 

To return to Turenne's operations. Shortly after his fail- 
ure at Freiburg, Conde crossed the Rhine at Breisach with 
his army of ten thousand men and Marshal Grammont second 
in command. He had marched from the Moselle, one hun- 
dred and eighty miles in thirteen days, then a rapid progress. 
Conde joined Turenne, August 2, at the camp which the latter 
had taken up fifteen or twenty miles from Breisach, and, as 
superior taking command of the combined forces, he moved 
forward to Freiburg. Mercy had fortified the height which 
Turenne had tried to seize some weeks before, and now held 
it in force. He had eight thousand foot and seven thousand 
horse, excellent troops, and had added to the strength which 
discipline had given the regiments all that art could do for 
their position. The hill he occupied was strongly intrenched 



UNWISE DIVISION OF FORCES. 



459 



with a redoubt on the right and a line of works and abatis ; 
and with the swamp on one side and the mountains on the 
other, he quite shut out approach to the city. The main 
camp lay in the rear of the intrenched hill. A careful recon- 
noissance was at once undertaken by Conde and Turenne up 
to the enemy's position, and it was determined that the chief 
should advance against the height in front while, under cover 
of his sharp demonstration, Turenne should make his way 
through the woods and defiles round Mercy's left flank, push 
in on the plain, and thus take him in reverse. The main 




Freiburg Battles. 



attack was set for five o'clock in the afternoon of August 3, 
so as to give Turenne what was deemed ample time to make 
his way by the long and difficult circuit mentioned. It was 
not then known that the enemy had made the route almost 
impassable by an intrenchment at the outlet of the defile, and 
by trees felled across the path. The plan was made in the 
dark. If Conde or Turenne could break through or turn 
Mercy's line, they could reach the Freiburg plain ; but by no 
other means could this be done from the direction on which 
they were operating. Their division was extra hazardous, 
even on the assumption that Mercy would keep to his works. 



460 A GALLANT ASSAULT. 

Conde had six thousand foot and three to four thousand 
horse, and among his lieutenants were Marshal Grammont 
and Generals d'Espenant and Marsin. Turenne had ten 
thousand men, half horse, half foot. 

At 5 P. m. Conde launched his men to the attack, there 
having been no special signal agreed on between him and 
Turenne. It was work for infantry only, and the cavalry 
was held in reserve on the flanks, to protect it so far as 
possible. The hill was one of those vine-terraced slopes, 
so common on the Rhine. Up it the troops went in gallant 
order, and took the line of abatis ; but their loss was consid- 
erable, and they paused at the foot of the works, and began 
to spread in their uncertainty to right and left in search of 
shelter. This pause looked critical. Failure stared the young- 
generalissimo in the face ; and there was too much at stake 
to hesitate. Dismounting, with all his generals and staff, he 
and they dashed up the slope on foot, and personally headed 
the troops for a fresh assault. No nation responds to gal- 
lantry of this sort quicker than the French; the battalions 
again knit ranks, took fresh heart, and poured over the 
intrenchments like a flood. The hill was won, and out of 
the three thousand Bavarians who had so bravely defended 
it, a bare hundred escaped the ensuing massacre. 

The situation was still desperate. Not knowing the ground, 
Conde feared a night attack by Mercy with fresh troops on 
his own men, who were unsettled by victory. He occupied 
the fort he had taken ; with immense exertion got his cavalry 
up the slopes, and there waited anxiously for Turenne and 
the morning. Had he known the situation, he might have 
taken the enemy who lay in front of Turenne in reverse; 
but the uncertainty of darkness precluded any further action. 

Turenne had started at daylight, had made his way with 
much exertion for sixteen or eighteen miles through the rug- 



MERCY WITHDRAWS. 461 

ged ground to within a short distance of the mouth of the 
defile ; but here a much larger force of the Bavarians than 
had faced Conde held head to him behind their stout line 
of works. Unable to get his cavalry out into open ground 
where it could deploy to support him, he was baffled. But 
as the best way out of a desperate position, he boldly attacked. 
Both lines stood in close fighting contact, — the reports say 
forty paces, — and the battle lasted fiercely through the late 
afternoon and evening, and scarcely ceased at night. The 
French troops behaved well, and stood a loss of fifteen hun- 
dred men without flinching. These were the same men who 
had decamped not long since before a picket of twenty men, 
— a phenomenon constantly occurring in war, and always 
curious. At this spot the Bavarians lost two thousand five 
hundred men. In fact, the casualties of both sides are by 
some authorities stated at an aggregate of six thousand. 
Each army was severely punished. 

Haply, the action of Mercy cut the knot of the French 
leaders' difficulty. On account of his depletion he dreaded 
a fresh battle under the same conditions ; and during the 
night, lest between the prince and the marshal he should 
not be able to hold himself on the lower ground and should 
suffer a more marked defeat, he withdrew to a new posi- 
tion back of the old one, leaning his right, which was of 
horse, on the outworks of Freiburg. Turenne and Conde 
were able to join hands and once more breathe freely. Their 
situation had been a bad one, but Mercy's retiring had saved 
them harmless. 

Turenne advised an attack on the 4th, but Conde declined 
to make one on the score of the exhaustion of the troops. 
Mercy threw up fresh works. His position was if possible 
stronger than the first one, but cramped. His artillery, sus- 
tained by four thousand foot, was posted so as to sweep the 



462 PARTIAL ATTACKS. 

approaches of the hill, and he was able to utilize the lines he 
had erected in the late siege. His front he covered with 
works constructed of rough logs, and with abatis. 

The succeeding day, August 5, brought on another hotly 
contested battle. Turenne felt the enemy early, edging to 
the right to make room for Conde on his left, and the latter's 
troops were got into touch with the enemy. During a lull in 
the opening of the fighting, when the two French commanders 
were reconnoitring with a view to a combined assault on the 
Bavarian lines, and had ordered that no manoeuvres should 
be undertaken in their absence, the restless commander of 
Conde's French infantry of the left, General d'Espenant, car- 
ried away by imprudent ardor, advanced on a work in his 
front that seemed weakly held ; seeing which, General Tau- 
padel, who understood that he was to follow the lead of the 
left, also threw forward his first line from the right. Both 
attacks were met in force, and brought on a series of par- 
tial engagements quite lacking ensemble; the French bat- 
talions lost heart and fell back from work which, well inau- 
gurated, they would have cheerfully done ; and the result 
was to disturb the tactical plans of the French commanders, 
and to bring about heavy losses on both sides, followed by 
an indecisive result. Turenne confesses in his memoirs that, 
had the enemy known the French situation, they could have 
destroyed the army, as the losses during the day had been 
between two and three thousand men in the wasteful fight- 
ing. But the Bavarians were in equally bad case, for Mercy 
had lost some twelve hundred killed, and his men were 
apparently more demoralized than the French, who had Conde 
and Turenne to sustain their flagging zeal. 

The line of communications and supply, and now sole line 
of retreat, of Mercy was through the valley of St. Peter's 
Abbey in his rear to Villingen. Conde, being unable to see 



MERCY RETIRES FOR GOOD. 463 

success in another front attack, on the 9th essayed to cut this 
line by a flank march via Langendenzlingen. This march 
was conducted expertly, but Mercy at once perceived its pur- 
pose, for the ground was open and revealed the direction of 
the French columns. He promptly withdrew, and marched 
on his base in Wiirtemberg. 

If the joint attack of Conde and Turenne on the 5th had 
not been spoiled by the folly of d'Espenant, there was prom- 
ise of a handsome victory. As it was, the Bavarian army 
had been reduced by nearly half, and the French joint forces 
by over five thousand men, in this three days' work. Desor- 
nieaux states the French loss in killed and wounded at six 
thousand men, and the Bavarian at nine thousand. But the 
French had captured all Mercy's guns. 

The French followed Mercy, but their van under Rosen 
suffered a check in a gallantly sustained cavalry combat ; and 
the extent of their present gain was the capture of a part of 
Mercy's train. The country was too mountainous to make a 
pursuit profitable, and lack of victual drove them back to 
Freiburg, as well as the fact that they were not equipped for 
lengthy operations and considered themselves too far from 
their base, the Rhine. They concluded, though it had but 
five hundred men in garrison, not to lay siege to Freiburg, 
whose possession Conde thought would bring no marked 
advantage, and would scarcely save the army from the neces- 
sity of retiring to Alsatia and Lorraine to winter. 

Conde, whose ideas were always broad, deemed it wiser to 
turn downstream on Philipsburg, to capture which fortress 
would result in commanding a large section of country on 
the right bank of the Rhine, on which the army might more 
readily subsist till spring. The siege would be a difficult 
one, but the enemy could not now reach the place in season 
to head him off ; Strasburg would furnish victual by boats 



464 



MARCH ON PHILIPSBURG. 



down the river ; and in this city he could, on his own credit, 
borrow money for the paymasters. Lack of sufficient infan- 
try was the main objection to the plan. 

Batteries were prepared in Breisach and floated down the 
Rhine on pontoons, with as much material and food as 
could be gathered. Cavalry parties were sent out to seize 
places likely to offer opposition on the march ; and the van 




Philipsburg. 

under Rosen followed. On August 16 the army broke up, 
with Turenne in the lead, and advanced down the Rhine 
valley to Philipsburg, where they arrived August 25, and 
Turenne at once blockaded the place. The garrison was 
probably under a thousand men. 

Philipsburg was one of the most important places on the 
Rhine, and lay in a plain surrounded by woods and marshes. 
It had only earthwork defenses, but these were very strong, 
mounted with one hundred guns, and the water from the river 



PHILIPSBURG SURRENDERS. 465 

flowed into wide and deep ditches. Approachable on but one 
side, — the south, — it had a fort which fairly well com- 
manded the river. Philipsburg had been acquired by France 
from the Swedes, who had captured it, but the emperor had 
retaken it, and Conde saw the strategic advantage of its 
possession. 

In order to control the river, the redoubt there situated 
was first captured by Turenne in a night attack. Contra- 
vallation and circumvallation lines were then opened. Two 
approaches were made, one by Grammont and one by 
Turenne, on the 7th of September ; next day a sortie was 
driven back, and a few days later an attempt to relieve the 
place was successfully resisted. The approaches were vigor- 
ously pushed, and the commander, Colonel Bamberg, despair- 
ing of holding out, and anxious to save the large stores and 
treasury for the emperor, finally accepted terms, and Phil- 
ipsburg surrendered September 12. During the siege, the 
French sent out a small detachment, which took Germer- 
sheim and occupied Speyer. 

In his memoirs Turenne complains that the French infan- 
try had lost heart in the Freiburg campaign. They had 
behaved well at times, and ill at times, proving a certain lack 
of discipline ; and yet they had shown exceptional ability to 
stand hammering, — not the only, but the most essential 
requisite of the soldier. They had lost an exceptionally 
heavy percentage of men ; and those who served through our 
1864 campaign in Virginia will remember that the extreme 
depletion of a rapid succession of battles will sometimes react 
on even the best of troops. 

The day after the surrender Turenne, under instructions 
from Conde, crossed the Rhine with his two thousand Ger- 
man cavalry and a chosen body of five hundred musketeers, 
and learning that a Spanish column was on the march to 



466 A GAINFUL CAMPAIGN. 

Frankentkal, lie sent a suitable detachment, which attacked 
this body, captured five hundred, and dispersed or killed the 
rest. The marshal then moved his infantry on boats down 
to Worms and Oppenheim, of which he took the former out 
of hand, while the latter fell to Rosen's cavalry ; disem- 
barked, and advanced by forced marches without baggage 
to Mainz, which was at the moment disgarnished of troops. 
This important city, whose possession secured the highway 
between France and her ally Hesse, though a Bavarian dra- 
goon force under Colonel Wolf sought to relieve it, after 
some negotiations surrendered, on a threat to storm it if 
surrender was refused or Wolf admitted. Conde shortly 
put in an appearance with the army, and took possession. 
The elector of Mainz had gone to Frankfort ; and the 
French occupied the whole vicinity, except only the castle of 
Creuznach, which held out. Small forces were left in Mainz, 
Oppenheim and Worms, and the French generals returned 
to Philipsburg. After reducing Creuznach, Turenne under- 
took the siege of Landau, where the French forces had just 
lost their commander, and on September 19, with a delay of 
only a few days, the place fell. 

After the capture of a few more smaller fortresses (Neu- 
stadt, Mannheim, Bacharach and others) Conde withdrew to 
France by way of Kaiserslautern and Metz, and Turenne 
remained at Philipsburg, with a much reduced force. The 
campaign had eventuated in decided gain. 

Conde and Turenne were worthy of each other. Except 
for a later temporary estrangement during the wars of the 
Fronde, they remained firm friends through life, neither jeal- 
ous of the other's accomplishment or ability, and able when 
together to work in perfect accord. Conde, who in these 
early campaigns was his superior in rank, knew how to utilize 
Turenne's experience, energy and skill to his own advantage, 



GENEROUS FRIENDS. 467 

but he never begrudged his lieutenant the appreciation which 
was his just due, nor denied him his share of the honor in 
the victories won by their joint efforts. And while opposed 
to each other in the wars of the Fronde, their friendship 
remained firm, as was the case with many of the generals in 
our own civil war. As general in command, Conde was of 
course entitled to the technical credit of success ; yet no one 
can fail to see how largely Turenne contributed to this ; and 
justice requires, as in the case of Marlborough and Eugene, 
— though these generals were equal in command, — that we 
should award to each his good half of the glory won. There 
are campaigns and battles of which the glory is universally 
yielded rather to the lieutenant than to the captain. Such 
was Chancellorsville. Though Lee was in supreme com- 
mand, our thoughts instinctively award to Stonewall Jackson 
the credit of the flank march and attack which were the 
beginning of the end in that, from the Confederate asjDect, 
superb campaign. It was so in some of the campaigns of 
Turenne and Conde. 




French Infantry Soldier. 
(1660.) 



XXXVII. 

MERGENTHEIM. MAY 5, 1645. 

Before going into winter-quarters, Turenne once more crossed the Rhine ; 
but as he found Mercy quiet on the Neckar, he undertook nothing. Next 
spring (1645) he again put over his army, and turning Mercy's position by the 
left, cut him off from Swabia. Mercy retired to Dinkelsbiihl ; Turenne followed 
to Mergentheim. Here, for ease of victualing, he spread out his forces over 
too wide an area ; Mercy and Werth moved sharply on him, and in the battle 
ensuing, by his troops behaving badly, Turenne was defeated with heavy loss. 
But he skillfully retired to Hesse, where he was joined by ten thousand Hes- 
sians and Swedes, and again immediately advanced on the enemy, who was 
besieging Kirchhain. Conde" with eight thousand men now came up, and took 
command of the joint army. The Swedes retired, leaving him seventeen thou- 
sand men. Crossing the Neckar, the French at Heilbronn turned the Bavarians' 
position, who retired to Feuchtwangen, and after a few days' manoeuvring to 
Dinkelsbiihl. Following them up, the French generals forced them back to 
Allerheim, where they determined to attack them. 

Shortly after Conde's departure, Turenne ascertained 
that, after repairing his losses, Mercy had left Wiirtemberg, 
and was marching on Heidelberg and Mannheim. He sus- 
pected that the Bavarian ' general designed to entice him 
away to cover Speyer, Worms and Mainz, in order mean- 
while to seize Philipsburg by a coup de main. He accord- 
ingly left two thousand men near this fortress in an intrenched 
camp, threw a bridge, and crossed the Rhine near Speyer 
with his cavalry and a few musketeers, sent small detach- 
ments to Worms and Mainz, and took full precaution to pro- 
tect all four places. It was a common habit of Turenne, 
as it was of Gustavus, to provide for remote contingen- 
cies. Mercy, however, had no such far-reaching intention ; he 



A HANDSOME MANCEUVRE. 469 

remained quiet between Heidelberg and Mannheim, and 
Turenne assumed that for want of provision he preferred not 
to cross the Rhine. He therefore sent the bulk of his troops 
to Lorraine into winter-quarters, keeping but a few cavalry- 
regiments near the Rhine, and these he billeted in the 
towns. The two thousand foot remained at Philipsburg ; 
what remained of the foot Turenne marched to Alsatia. 

Soon afterwards Turenne heard that the duke of Lorraine 
had passed the Moselle with six thousand men, had captured 
several places, Castellaun and Simmern among them, and 
was investing Bacharach. Hurriedly marching with five 
hundred horse on Mainz and Bingen, he spread the rumor 
that this was but the van of the entire army, which in truth 
he made arrangements to mobilize, and forced the duke back. 
Then taking the castle of Creuznach, which had held out in 
the last siege, he definitely retired, in December, 1644, into 
winter-quarters along the left bank of the Rhine, with head- 
quarters in Speyer. The year had been full of activity, and 
fairly successful. 

In early April of 1645 Turenne again entered the field 
with six thousand foot, five thousand horse and fifteen guns, 
crossed the Rhine on a bridge of boats at Speyer, and moved 
on Pforzheim. He hoped in opening the campaign to antici- 
pate Mercy, who lay beyond the Neckar with a force which 
had been diminished to six or seven thousand men by send- 
ing reinforcements to the imperial army in Bohemia, and 
whose troops were yet spread all over the country in canton- 
ments. With his cavalry alone, and leaving his foot to fol- 
low on by rapid marches, Turenne crossed the Neckar near 
Marbach, April 16, through a ford which was not watched 
by the enemy, and marched along the right bank past Heil- 
bronn to Schwabisch-Hall, in order to throw Mercy, who 
had intended to move southward into Swabia, back in a 



470 ITS SUCCESS. 

northerly direction. This was a neat and well-executed 
manoeuvre ; and to follow out his plan, now that Turenne 
had cut him off, and recover his communications with the 
Danube country, Mercy was obliged at once to move easterly, 
towards Dinkelsbiihl and Feuchtwangen, by a considerable 
circuit. 

At one moment during his advance with his cavalry 
Turenne feared that Mercy would fall on his infantry col- 
umn, which was far in the rear and separated from the horse, 
and turned back towards it. This afforded watchful Mercy 
a chance to slip by him; he did not, however, venture to 
attack the column of foot. But for thus retracing his steps, 
Turenne would have earned the chance to follow Mercy with 
his horse, and to give his rear-guard a hearty slap ; but all 
through his career he was noted for scrupulous care ; and 
while this in the long run served him admirably, at times it 
looks like over-caution. In this case Mercy gained abundant 
leisure to escape. 

Turenne had accomplished his object, and had warded off 
any danger of the enemy's invasion of Alsatia ; but as Mercy 
had got away from him without a blow, Turenne assembled 
all his forces at Hall, and moved north on Mergentheim (or 
Marienthal) on the Tauber, so as to have in his rear and 
open to him the allied Hessian country. He had good reason 
to hope that before summer he should receive reinforcements 
from there ; on the arrival of which he counted on pushing 
into the heart of Germany, a thing which at the moment he 
did not feel strong enough to attempt. Near this town he 
put the foot and artillery into camp. 

By his able turning manoeuvre he had hustled the enemy 
out of a position threatening to France, and then reestablished 
himself by a change of base where he could rely either upon 
his holdings in Alsatia or on his Hessian allies. The entire 



A SURPRISE. 



471 



operation was skillful ; in it we see a gleam of the purposeful 
manoeuvring of the future. 

From Mergentheim Turenne sent General Rosen with four 
or five cavalry regiments as an outpost up the Tauber towards 
Rotkemburg, and quartered the rest of his cavalry, for greater 
convenience of foraging, in towns two or three hours in the 
rear. This was a manifest error, for the enemy was not far 
distant, was in good heart and ably led, and Turenne knew 




Operation of Mergentheim. 



nothing of his intentions ; he ought to have kept well con- 
centrated. In effect, within a day or so, he learned that the 
Bavarians had broken up at Feuchtwangen, and were moving 
on him at Mergentheim. Rosen had not had enough scouting 
parties out, and the information preceded the enemy's van 
but a few hours. 

Immediately ordering Rosen back to a position where he 
could be sustained, Turenne called in his outlying cavalry 
parties, and instructed Rosen to take position in rear of a 



472 FIGHTING IN THE WOODS. 

wood which lay some distance in front of Mergentheim, at 
which obstacle he could conveniently assemble all his forces, 
and if desirable retire to a better point for battle. He should, 
observes Napoleon, have ordered his forces to assemble at 
Mergentheim, which was behind the Tauber and nearer for 
all the outlying regiments, certainly at a point further behind 
the outposts than the one he chose. But to make matters 
worse, by misunderstanding his orders, Rosen took position 
in front of the wood, where, as alleged by Turenne, he could 
neither hold himself, nor easily retreat, nor be readily sup- 
ported, and where the enemy, if he attacked him, was sure to 
bring on an engagement on unfavorable ground. This was 
in fact what occurred. Mercy advanced on him, and Turenne 
found himself compelled to sustain his lieutenant under awk- 
ward conditions. 

Our own habit of frequently fighting in the woods during 
the civil war breeds among American soldiers a belief that a 
forest is not so marked an obstacle as it is wont to be consid- 
ered in Europe. But in Turenne's days, and in fact at all 
times, a wood even free from the underbrush of the American 
forest was considered a very serious post to attack, if held by 
foot ; and so difficult was it deemed to get troops through an 
open wood in good order, that a few squadrons posted beyond 
it were believed to be able to break up the organization of 
troops emerging from it. The nature of the wood had natu- 
rally much to do with the matter ; but on such a terrain as 
our " Wilderness," no European army would for a moment 
think of manoeuvring. They are too much used to the open 
plain ; and it was under such conditions that Turenne pro- 
posed to fall upon his enemy after the latter had passed 
through the wood and was apt to be in broken order. 

The three thousand infantry which had arrived Turenne 
placed on the right of the cavalry, equally in the wood, and 



THE FRENCH DEMORALIZED. 



473 



sustained by two other squadrons. He himself took up post 
in the left wing. As the Bavarians advanced in two lines, the 
foot in the centre and the horse on the wings, the right under 
command of Mercy and the left of John de Werth, Turenne 
led forward his own cavalry, fell upon the horse in first line 
on the Bavarian right, and threw it back on the second line 
in much disorder. But meanwhile Werth attacked the 
French infantry in the wood, and the latter, which had been 
hurried into action 
and felt as if it had 
been surprised, and 
was moreover in 
poor order from 
having been pushed 
through the wood, 
after but a single 
salvo seemed to lose 
heart, and, attacked : >- ■:{<? 
in front and on both 
flanks, fled, carry- 
ing with it the two 
squadrons of cav- 
alry which sustained 
it. This disgraceful conduct, which now enabled Werth 
to threaten Turenne' s flank, forced the French left wing of 
horse to retire also, which it did in equal disorder. Rosen 
was captured, and Turenne so nearly compromised that he 
was forced to cut himself out sword in hand. The fault here 
appears to have been not more due to the position than to 
the lack of endurance of the troops ; and yet this was the 
same infantry which at Freiburg the year before had so 
cheerfully stood decimation. 

In Turenne's rear lay still another wood. Here he boldly 







Mergentheim Battle. 



474 TURENNE'S FRANKNESS. 

essayed a further defense with three fresh cavalry regiments 
which had just come up, and some twenty-five hundred rallied 
runaways. But as the enemy prudently took time to reform 
and came on in fine shape, and he could make no headway in 
retrieving his loss, Turenne accepted his defeat in good part, 
and definitively retired. He personally covered the retreat 
up the Tauber on the Main with two of the three cavalry regi- 
ments that were intact, detailing the third to accompany the 
disorganized foot, which he ordered to retreat to the border of 
Hesse ; but as the Bavarians followed him up more sharply 
than usual, and as he disputed every inch of the way, he 
lost heavily in men and flags and guns in the rear-guard 
fighting. The battle of Mergentheim had cost him all his 
artillery, baggage and fifteen hundred men. The tactical 
pursuit, however, did not continue far. The Bavarians, 
according to the habit of the day, remained on the field to 
celebrate the victory. 

In his memoirs Turenne openly acknowledges his defeat. 
In this respect the French marshal is a model. Whether the 
advantage lay with him or with the enemy, he always frankly 
confesses it. Unlike so many generals, whose retreat from the 
field of battle belies their grandiloquent reports of victory, 
Turenne lays bare the facts, shows us his errors, and thus 
gives us lessons which can never be learned from prevaricat- 
ing dispatches. 

The Bavarians soon followed Turenne to Hesse and laid 
siege to Kirchhain; Turenne retired to Cassel. Near this 
place he joined the six thousand Hessians, and the Swedes 
who, four thousand strong, had come up from Brunswick 
under Konigsmark ; by which accessions, with his own four 
thousand horse and one thousand five hundred foot, he made 
up a force of fifteen thousand men ; and with these he at 
once advanced on Kirchhain. This was all done within twelve 



CONDE AGAIN IN COMMAND. 475 

days after his defeat, showing an elasticity and a quick- 
ness of movement which were admirable ; for Cassel is about 
a hundred miles from Mergentheim, and there were negotia- 
tions which consumed some days and delayed Turenne's 
action as much as the reorganization of his troops. Raising 
the siege of Kirchhain, the Bavarians at once retired to Fran- 
conia. Turenne shortly led his forces to join the eight thou- 
sand men coming by way of Speyer under Conde, which he 
did at Ladenburg, near Mannheim, on July 5. 

Conde again assumed command. He had been campaign- 
ing on the Meuse, where France desired a foothold strong 
enough to control Lorraine, a province essential to her com- 
munications with Germany ; and having left Villeroi to con- 
tinue his work, he had been ordered to the relief of Turenne, 
whose defeat had demoralized the French court. They had 
abundant confidence in Conde, but lacked belief in Turenne, 
— a rather curious want of discrimination, yet easily bred 
of Rocroy and the two last campaigns. They changed their 
mind ere long. 

Though in command, Conde, unlike the court, had the good 
sense to recognize the worth of Turenne, and took counsel of 
his ample knowledge and courage ; and the two generals at 
once moved up the left bank of the Neckar on Heilbronn. 
But Mercy anticipated them at this important place ; and 
finding the Bavarians beyond the river and holding the 
passage there so as to make it difficult to force, they had to 
choose between a march up river towards Swabia or another 
crossing and a march towards the Danube country. The 
Swedish contingent refused to entertain the former plan, 
fearing by so distant an operation to be cut off from north 
Germany; and the French commanders finally decided on 
Wimpfen, which place they took, and crossed the Neckar 
on a bridge they built. Here Kbnigsmark, in consequence of 



476 THE ENEMY RETIRES. 

a disagreement with Conde, and restless at serving under so 
young a commander, left the French and led his Swedes back 
towards the Main. The Hessians stood by, and Conde" and 
Turenne, taking a number of places on the way, moved on 
Rothemburg. So soon as the French had crossed the Neckar, 
the Bavarians retired on a substantially parallel line to 
Feuchtwangen, where they set up an intrenched camp. The 
French commanders offered Mercy battle, but without avail ; 
for Mercy deemed it better to retire to another intrenched 
camp, behind Dinkelsbiihl. The rival armies had got back 
to the same campaigning ground on which they had manoeu- 
vred a month or two before. From Dinkelsbiihl, in a few 
days, leaving a small garrison in this place, the enemy retired, 
and camped behind a wood several miles further back, appar- 
ently as a stratagem to induce the French to besiege the camp 
just left, an operation which might afford them an occasion 
of making a favorable attack. Turenne and Conde followed 
up this retreat, and stopping at Dinkelsbiihl to capture the 
intrenched camp, soon learned that the army under Mercy 
was advancing on them. Leaving a small body to observe 
the camp, the French set out to meet the enemy. Both Conde 
and Turenne accompanied the van, while Grammont brought 
up the main army. 

At break of day the French, who had marched at night, 
struck the Bavarian van, and this retired on its main body, 
which was intrenched in a difficult position behind a marshy 
brook and some ponds. An all-day's cannonade resulted, 
with a loss of three hundred men on each side ; but though 
the Bavarians could not be successfully attacked in their posi- 
tion, they feared for their line of retreat, and concluded to 
retire towards Nordlingen. Having so far failed by front 
operations to gain any advantage over the enemy, two hours 
before daylight next day the French generals, turning the 



THE ENEMY STANDS. 



477 



Bavarian position by the right, also marched on Nordlingen, 
which they reached by nine o'clock, and camped in the plain, 
leaving the baggage train in some of the villages in the rear. 
The Bavarian army, which had been reinforced by seven 
thousand imperial troops under General Glein, had divined 
the manoeuvre, and lest they should be cut off, had already 
reached Nordlingen plain in light order, and seized an advan- 
tageous position. 







French Dragoon. (17th Century.) 



XXXVIII. 

ALLERHEIM. AUGUST 5, 1645. 

The Bavarian right, under Glein, lay on the Wennenberg ; their centre, under 
Mercy, back of and in Allerheim village ; their left, under Werth, on the hill 
and in the castle of Allerheim. Conde^ in the French centre, essayed with his 
infantry to capture Allerheim, but was driven back ; Werth broke the French 
right under Grammont and drove it well to the rear : the day was very doubt- 
ful. But Turenne, on the French left, by splendid efforts broke Glein's for- 
mation and captured the Wennenberg. After defeating Grammont, Werth, by 
striking Turenne's right, might have completed the Bavarian victory ; but he 
did not utilize his advantage in the best manner, and night came on. The 
Bavarians retired, and the French kept the field. The losses were very heavy. 
Nordlingen surrendered ; the enemy moved back of the Danube. The French 
would have liked to winter in Swabia, but the Bavarians demonstrated towards 
them and they retired to the Rhine. After capturing Trier and Oberwesel, 
Turenne went into winter-quarters. On the whole, the campaign was favora- 
ble to the French ; for its activity, it was highly creditable to Turenne. 

The rolling plain of Nordlingen, watered by the Wormitz 
and Eger, is a dozen miles in diameter, and the town lies near 
its southwestern edge. Near the southeastern edge, backing 
up against the Wormitz, lay the enemy, between two hills, a 
mile and a half apart. The Wennenberg is about one hun- 
dred and sixty feet above the plain, and steep ; the other, 
about one hundred and twenty feet high and less steep, was 
at the time crowned by the castle of Allerheim. Between 
them, a quarter of a mile further forward, lay the village of 
Allerheim. From the castle hill to Allerheim ran a wide and 
deep gully ; from Allerheim to the Wennenberg the ground 
is much cut up. In this admirable defensive position, pro- 
posing to fight for the possession of Nordlingen and the 



THE BAVARIAN POSITION. 



479 



protection of Bavaria, Mercy took his stand early on August 
3, and began to intrencli ; and shortly there arose a strong 
line of earthworks, hard to force, easy to hold. In prolonga- 
tion of his left through the hills ran the short road to the 
Danube at Donauworth, a good day's march away. 

The Bavarian right leaned on the Wormitz, and its left 
on the castle of Allerheirn. This stronghold and the village 
opposite the cen- 
tre were occu- 
pied by foot ; the 
main force lay 
on the heights 
behind the vil- 
lage, and the cav- 
alry was posted 
on both flanks. 
Glein was on the 
right ; John de 
Werth, an able 
veteran officer, 
on the left ; 
Mercy in the 

centre. Artillery was posted all along the lines, and the elite 
of the infantry held the village. Mercy had about sixteen 
thousand men. 

Conde, with Turenne and Grammont, made a reconnoissance 
early in the day; and though the position of the enemy 
evoked some serious comments, he decided to fight, and was 
sustained by the council then usual. His force was slightly 
superior to Mercy's. He posted Count Grammont in two 
lines and a reserve on the right, opposite Werth ; the foot, — 
the corps de bataille, — also in two lines, was in the centre, 
under Marsin ; and Turenne, with his own forces and the 




Battle of Allerheirn. 



480 CONDE OUTMATCHED. 

Hessians in reserve, held the left opposite Glein. The usual 
artillery duel opened the action. 

Towards noon the French troops began to move forward, 
but they took till four o'clock marshaling for the attack ; a 
period which, with an army of so small a size, suggests very 
mediocre capacity to manoeuvre. They then advanced, artil- 
lery in front, and smartly attacked the village, which lay 
well in front of the enemy's main line, but lost more heavily 
by the Bavarian artillery than the enemy did by theirs. Bat- 
teries at that day were slow of movement, and on both sides 
the guns were, according to modern standard, clumsily man- 
aged. It was not the artillery of Gustavus, and the Swedes 
then still possessed the only well-managed, easily-handled 
batteries. Even the French, despite their imitative ability 
and the intelligent manner of their equipment, had as yet 
reached no such standard of excellence in field-guns as Gus- 
tavus had boasted. 

Conde believed that no impression could be made on 
Mercy's line until the force which was thrust out as a salient 
in the village was disposed of; he took his stand here, and 
directed the attack of Marsin's foot. At that point the action 
began, and very heavy fighting was kept up, with especial 
severity in the churchyard. The French behaved with com- 
mendable gallantry, and were met with equal courage by the 
Bavarians ; the village was captured and recaptured five 
times, the ground being fought over with admirable tenacity. 
Conde, whose peculiar style of fighting and experience was 
suited to cavalry rather than foot, was somewhat out of his 
element, but he clung to his work ; his staff were nearly all 
disabled, he himself had several horses shot under him during 
the day, and received bullets on his breastplate and through 
his clothing. Mercy was killed, and both parties lost heavily. 
Success in the centre was disputed. Conde began to see that 



A CRITICAL PERIOD. 481 

he could not compass a victory here by even his best efforts ; 
the victor of Rocroy had met a more stubborn task than he 
had yet faced. This cold-blooded infantry fighting lacked 
the touch-and-go of cavalry work. 

While this was going on, Conde had directed Grammont 
to attack Werth ; but the count, on ascertaining the presence 
of the gully above referred to, maintained that he could not 
reach the Bavarian line ; and Conde rode over to the left, 
leaving him to a defensive role. To show how mistaken 
he was, soon after Conde's departure the Bavarian cav- 
alry of the left wing, led by Werth in person, rode out, 
crossed the gully without difficulty, and attacked the French 
cavalry under Grammont, striking it partly in flank, and 
driving it back after a mere attempt at resistance. In 
the confusion Marshal Grammont was shot and captured. 
Had it not been for the reserve of this wing, Werth would 
have won the victory right here ; but General Chabot some- 
what checked his progress, and so much time elapsed before 
Werth could complete the wreck of the French right, that the 
opportunity slipped out of his hands. Werth did, however, 
eventually crush Grammont, and this disaster threw the 
French infantry of the centre and the cavalry in its support 
completely out of Allerheim. 

Matters looked dubious for the French. Happily, on their 
left there was a man of energy and resources, of caution when 
called for, of gallantry not second to Conde's ; a man who 
could deal you lusty blows. During this time, while Conde 
had been unable to capture Allerheim, and Grammont had 
been driven from his foothold on the right, Turenne, with the 
cavalry of the French left, had gallantly and repeatedly 
charged in on the enemy's right, and, after a tough conflict 
and much loss, had, despite the bad ground, driven the first 
line back on the second. Here he was for a moment checked, 



482 TURENNE TURNS THE SCALE. 

partly by the fresh troops brought up by Glein, and partly 
by the view of the French disaster in the village and on the 
right. It was a critical moment, one of those which show up 
the man. The only French troops which had not been beaten 
were under his command ; but Turenne, who though wounded 
still kept in the saddle, was not to be easily discouraged ; he 
saw that he held the fate of victory in his grasp ; only he 
could save the French from another defeat. He ordered up 
the Hessians, who were fresh and eager; Conde put in an 
appearance to help encourage the troops, and, returning to 
the charge, the two generals definitely drove back the Bava- 
rian right wing of cavalry, which had advanced into the plain. 
At the same time, under cover of this charge, the Bavarian 
infantry of their right on the Wennenberg was sharply 
attacked ; Turenne's men caught the ardor of victory and 
the heroism of their chief ; and in the melee General Glein 
and all the artillery were captured. 

Having completed the discomfiture of the French right, 
despite the success of the French left, Werth now had the 
battle in his own hands. He should have turned directly 
against Turenne and have struck a blow at his naked flank, 
while he was busy breaking up the Bavarian right. Had he 
done so, Turenne would have been destroyed, and there was 
no obstacle in Werth' s way. The French right was broken, 
and the centre had been driven out of Allerheim and well 
back. The Bavarians held the town, and the road was open. 
But Werth, though instinct with gallantry of the first water, 
and of unquestioned ability, did not here exhibit the cowp 
d'oeil of a battle captain. Instead of riding across the front 
of Allerheim, directly at Turenne's open flank, he returned 
by the way he had gone out, and came into action by the rear 
of the village, arriving too late to be of any use. When he 
reached Turenne, in fact, he struck him, not in flank, as he 



HEAVY LOSSES. 483 

might have done, but in front, or at best at an oblique angle. 
His work was thus quite ineffective, and Turenne was able to 
turn against him and throw him back from the Wennenberg. 

Night had come on. The left of each army was victorious, 
the French somewhat the more advanced, and well beyond 
Allerheim. The right wing of each had been utterly worsted. 
Supposing themselves cut off by Turenne's advance, the 
Bavarian troops in Allerheim surrendered. Neither side had 
won an undisputed victory, but after midnight the Bavarian 
army confessed defeat by quietly withdrawing from the field, 
unaware that the French were as badly demoralized as they 
themselves were ; and their retreat compensated Turenne, to 
whom the credit of the victory was due, for his late defeat 
at Mergentheim. " Were I not Conde, I would wish to be 
Turenne ! " exclaimed the young general-in-chief in his exul- 
tation over what his lieutenant had accomplished; and de- 
spite the fact that Napoleon awards the main praise of this 
victory to Conde, it was really Turenne's battle — as Conde in 
a letter to the queen of Sweden generously acknowledges. 

Had the fighting continued next day, it is more than prob- 
able that the Bavarians would have been beaten, as they 
had lost their leaders, and with a woody defile in their rear 
on their route to the Danube, in case of defeat they were 
badly placed. The French had suffered heavily in casualties, 
— four thousand in killed and wounded, — but had captured 
all the Bavarian guns. The Bavarians lost an equal number 
and two thousand captured beside, with nearly all their battle 
flags. Of their generals, Mercy was killed, Glein captured, 
and Werth in full retreat ; of the French generals, all three 
were wounded. The battle was contested in the handsomest 
manner. The French loss had been most severe in the 
infantry ; a bare twelve hundred serviceable foot could be 
gathered under arms. 



484 BATTLE DISCIPLINE. 

In this battle of Allerheim (or, as it is often called, of 
Nbrdlingen) the French cavalry of the right had behaved 
badly; that of the left with commendable steadiness. The 
Trench infantry at that time has been taxed by contemporary 
writers with being lamentably bad. The men, they said, 
would attack once in good heart, but if beaten in an assault, 
there was no more fight left in them. Once dispersed, they 
could not be rallied. And yet they fought stanchly here, and 
we shall see that they did noble work under the influence of 
such men as Turenne, Conde, Vendome and Villars. Despite 
their uncertain mood, they were at times capable of very gal- 
lant fighting, as their percentage of loss well shows. 

Heavy casualties are not always a sure test of steadiness. 
A division which marches straight at the foe may win at a 
small loss ; a division which hesitates may suffer decimation 
under the enemy's fire, and if defeated — or even if it wins — 
its loss will be no test of its push or its resistance. Butchery 
apart, only long-protracted fighting between equally matched 
divisions, with heavy losses on both sides, — the Bloody Angle 
as an instance, — is a test of battle courage and discipline. 
Heavy losses may be accidental. 

Nbrdlingen did not await the French attack, but at once 
surrendered, and the captured Bavarians were allowed to 
leave for home without weapons. Turenne followed up the 
enemy's retreat to Donauwbrth with his cavalry, whence he 
returned to the army ; and Conde and he, after a few days' 
rest, retired to Dinkelsbiihl, which likewise surrendered. 
This rearward movement Turenne explains by lack of money 
and consequent inability to victual so far from the Rhine and 
Neckar country. . 

Conde now left the army, seriously ill, and Count Gram- 
mont, who had been released, took his place ; but Turenne 
and he continued operations jointly. Turenne was so far his 



THE FRENCH RETIRE. 485 

superior, as even that of Conde, that it grates upon one's 
sense of justice to see him so often second in command. It 
was by an extension of the ancient belief that kings divinely 
inherit their rights into the superstition that princes are born 
generals, that the command of armies was often placed in 
hands unfit to hold it, and that Turenne did not always stand 
where he deserved to be. But his merit was so well recos 1 - 
nized by his superiors that he was uniformly given entire lat- 
itude in his operations. 

The French now marched back to Heilbronn, but having 
small siege material, could not take this strongly garrisoned 
place ; and thence by a sudden change of plan they advanced 
on Schwabisch-Hall, hoping to push the enemy back over the 
Danube, so as to enable them to winter in Swabia. But the 
Bavarian army, reinforced by seven thousand imperial cav- 
alry and dragoons, took up its stand at Donauworth on the 
left bank, and demonstrated towards the French ; when the 
latter, not liking to go into winter-quarters too near an army 
superior to itself in numbers, deemed it best to retire on the 
Main and Neckar. This withdrawal appears to have been 
made on a slender pretext ; but the reasons alleged by the 
old historians are often quoted in these pages, even when they 
do not appeal to us as sound. The French left a garrison of 
six hundred men in Wimpfen, and retired across the Neckar 
at this point. The water was so deep that the cavalry had to 
swim the river, each one taking a footman with him, and a 
number of men and wagons were lost. 

From here the French army again withdrew to Philips- 
burg, hoping to camp permanently on the right bank, and 
the Bavarians followed it up. Turenne began an intrenched 
position between Philipsburg and the Rhine, and sent his 
cavalry and baggage over to the left bank on boats ; while, 
finding that they could accomplish nothing further, the Bava- 



486 AN ACTIVE CAMPAIGN. 

rians returned to Wimpfen, captured it, as was to be expected, 
and went into winter-quarters. 

The French army under Grammont marched back to 
France, but Turenne, learning that the enemy was kept too 
busy in Flanders to hinder him, moved on Trier, captured it 
by a two days' siege, gave it over for occupation to the allied 
elector of Trier, besieged and stormed the castle of Ober- 
wesel on the Rhine, and then, placing his army in winter- 
quarters along the Rhine and Moselle, he personally repaired 
to Paris. 

This campaign is distinguished from those of the period 
by its stirring activity, and by seeking battle rather than by 
besieging strong places. Against the defeat at Mergentheim 
may fairly be placed the victory at Allerheim, and the speed 
shown by Conde and Turenne is highly commendable, com- 
pared with that of other commanders. The Bavarian move- 
ments followed the French, who in every case retained the 
initiative. The advantage, if any, was on the French side, 
though they ended where they began ; and it was rather 
technical than real. Many of the campaigns of this era 
appear to us to have no very manifest objective, as they had 
no very definite outcome ; and armies were wont to return to 
their base for winter-quarters. Such campaigns were mere 
rounds in a boxing match ; each opponent sought to tire out 
the other, if there was no particular object to gain. It is 
the peculiar indefiniteness of almost all campaigns of the day 
preceding and following him which throws the clear-cut pur- 
pose of Gustavus into such relief. What Gustavus once 
took, he held ; other generals rarely did so. 

The biographers of Conde are wont to ascribe to him all 
the credit of this and other campaigns in which Turenne and 
he worked jointly ; but the after history of both these cap- 
tains best indicates who was the more able man. Conde 



TO WHOM THE CREDIT? 



487 



knew well how to put Turenne's ability to use, and the lat- 
ter's modesty never permitted him to trench on his superior's 
prerogative ; but it must be said to Conde's credit that he 
was always generous in the division of honors. 




Norman Soldier. 
(7th Century.) 



XXXIX. 

CONDE AT DUNKIRK. SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER, 1646. 

The duke of Orleans commanded the French in the Netherlands in 1646. 
Under him Cond^ served until the duke had captured Mardyk, when he suc- 
ceeded to the command and undertook the capture of Dunkirk, the most impor- 
tant fortress on the coast. First proceeding to Hondschoten, he thence took and 
fortified Furnes. From here he advanced along the coast on Dunkirk, whose 
commander, Leyden, inundated the vicinity to prevent Cond^ from getting sup- 
plies. The difficulties were grave : the garrison of ten thousand men could he 
victualed hy sea ; there was danger of an army of relief coming up ; Conde' 
was put to it to get victual or material. But he made a treaty with the Dutch, 
who not only helped shut the place in hy sea, hut hegan a diversion against the 
Spaniards. He worked incessantly, and was lucky in having no serious inter- 
ference from the outside. His lines and approaches were duly completed, and 
several sorties repulsed. On October 1 and 2 assaults were made, a footing 
gained in the place, and ten days later, Dunkirk surrendered. Cond£ then 
relieved Camhray, and the campaign closed. 

On account of his royal birth the duke of Orleans had 
been put in command of the troops operating in the Low 
Countries, and in 1646 Conde, though conscious of his supe- 
rior ability, appears to have willingly and conscientiously 
served under him. The army had cautiously advanced as far 
as Mardyk, below Dunkirk, when Conde proposed the siege 
of the latter place, the most important and strongest fortress 
on the coast ; but his chief had not the courage to undertake 
it. Mardyk had been captured the previous year by the duke 
of Orleans after a costly twenty days' siege, and had been 
later seized by the Spaniards in a cleverly designed and sud- 
den attack, with merely nominal loss ; now, after opening- 
lines and trenches, and after several bloody sorties and 



CONDE ASSUMES COMMAND. 489 

attempts to relieve the town from the outside, the French 
managed to cut the place off from Dunkirk, and took it; 
upon which the duke, despairing of further successes, and 
satisfied with his few laurels, prudently retired to Paris to 
celebrate his triumph, and Conde received command of an 
exhausted army of ten thousand men. With this handful 
he undertook the proposed operation against Dunkirk, to 
reduce which he had to contain the large Spanish army, beat 
the marquis of Caracena, — who lay in the way, intrenched 



5, 10 IS 2D IS 




Vicinity of Dunkirk. 

within a network of canals and rivers, — capture Furnes, and 
hold the sea against a Spanish fleet. The communication in 
this singular country is mostly by canal ; the roads run along 
the dikes ; the rivers are largely turned into artificial water- 
ways ; and campaigning is correspondingly difficult. The 
region between Mardyk and Nieuport is entirely cut up by 
small streams and canals ; it is well adapted for defense, 
difficult for the offensive. 

In pursuance of his bold plan, Conde marched September 
4 to Hondschoten, where he deposited his heavy train. His 
first objective was Furnes. To cross the several canals fed 



490 FURNES CAPTURED. 

by the Colme and held by troops as numerous as his own, 
he organized three columns which he himself was to sustain 
with the reserve, as might be needed. The first column, 
under Marshal Gassion, headed for Furnes and threw back 
the Spanish force towards Caracena at Nieuport. The sec- 
ond, under General Laval, marched on Gassion's left to force 
the line of the Colme canals, and accomplished its object with 
equal celerity. The third, under Villequier, was headed on 
Gassion's right towards Vulpen. This column met unex- 
pected resistance, but, being properly supported by Conde, 
drove in the enemy, and then pushed for Fumes, which town 
was taken by assault, the Spanish general having declined 
to sustain it, though it was essential to whoever should 
undertake a siege of Dunkirk. It is not probable that the 
Spaniards anticipated so apparently foolhardy an act as an 
investment of that fortress. 

At the council of war which Conde called, there was some 
desire manifested to besiege Menin in lieu of Dunkirk ; but 
Conde convinced his lieutenants that the latter was vastly 
the more important place, while the difficulty of besieg- 
ing the other was equally great ; and his plan was approved 
by the court, to whom all such matters had customarily to 
be referred. 

Dunkirk is built on the dunes which extend up the coast 
all the way from Calais. The sea bounds it on the north ; 
Furnes and Nieuport lie on the east ; Bergen on the south, 
and on the west Mardyk. The old town was fortified ; the 
new town lay outside. The walls were thick and flanked by 
huge towers ; while a brick-lined ditch one hundred and 
twenty feet wide was fed by canals from the river Colme. 
The sea, breaking in towards the town, opened a fine port, 
which art had made capable of holding eight hundred ves- 
sels, and its entrance was defended by an extension of the 



IMPORTANCE OF DUNKIRK. 



491 



fortifications on the dunes, and by two breakwaters on which 
artillery was mounted. Three great canals led out of Dun- 
kirk, and boats could sail thither to every city of the Low 
Countries. The dried-herring trade had originally given 
importance to this city ; and since its growth to wealth and 
power it had been captured by several of the nations in suc- 
cession. Charles V. had granted it many privileges, and it 
was the bulwark of the Hapsburg dominion in the Nether- 




Dunkirk. 



lands. Its trade with the interior and by sea was immense ; it 
maintained a number of privateers which did much damage 
to the French ports and commerce, and it had successfully 
engaged the Dutch fleet. Its garrison consisted of three 
thousand soldiers, four thousand sailors and three thousand 
trained burghers, and was under command of the marquis of 
Leyden, who had won great repute by defending Maestricht 
for three months against a large Dutch army. 

The difficulties were indeed great. Condi's army of ten 



492 CONDE' S DIFFICULTIES. 

thousand men was tired out, and had little left but good-will 
with which to undertake further work ; the vicinity of Dun- 
kirk is a waste of sand, with none but swamp water, affording 
no subsistence for troops, nor indeed means of constructing 
works deserving the name. Fumes, the base for the siege, 
was not strong and might fall into the hands of the Span- 
iards, who, moreover, were able at any time to relieve Dun- 
kirk from the sea or along the beach at low tide. The Dutch 
were uncertain and somewhat jealous allies, liable at any 
moment to be bought off by the enemy. Victual had to come 
from Calais, and the Dunkirkers had inundated the land by 
opening the canal-sluices, so that provision could not be 
hauled overland, while a tempestuous sea or the enemy's fleet 
might at any moment interrupt the supply coming by water. 
Worse than all, the season was getting late, and success must 
be won soon or not at all. 

The duke of Lorraine was in camp on the border of Hol- 
land ; Marshals Piccolomini and Beck, with the main Spanish 
army, lay under the cannon of Dendermonde; Caracena 
under those of Nieuport. On the other hand, the French 
troops believed in Conde, while the enemy was supine. The 
Dutch question was the most pressing, and Conde settled that 
by sending an able ambassador to the Hague, who so far won 
the assistance of the States-General that Van Tromp soon 
patroled the sea near Dunkirk, and the prince of Orange 
undertook a diversion against the Spaniards. 

Conde ordered La Ferte, who had four thousand men on 
the Lys, to be ready at any moment to join him ; he sent for 
part of the garrisons in Picardy ; the Boulognese militia was 
armed ; six thousand men came to him by sea and were put 
for rest and drill into Mardyk ; two thousand Poles recruited 
by Baron Sirot and one thousand English recruits were 
placed in Calais. All these were so posted that they could 



IN FRONT OF DUNKIRK. 493 

be concentrated in twenty-four hours, and fifteen small frig- 
ates were ordered to patrol the mouth of the port of Dunkirk. 
Furnes was stoutly fortified under Conde's own eye, a gar- 
rison of one thousand five hundred men was put in the town, 
and a large supply of provision was collected there. Two 
weeks after the army reached Furnes, so active had been his 
measures that Conde advanced on Dunkirk with ten thou- 
sand foot and five thousand horse. 

The leader himself with the first column took the road 
nearest to the enemy, along the coast ; Gassion with the second 
marched on his left, along the canal running from Furnes to 
Dunkirk; Rantzau with the third marched across country 
towards the Colme. All the columns reached their objectives 
in good season. 

Once quartered in front of Dunkirk, the French were in 
no danger of attack save from the direction of Nieuport. 
Gassion held the line from the sea to the middle of the 
dunes ; next him Conde to the Furnes canal ; then Rantzau 
astride the canal of Bergen. Villequier, with the Boulo- 
gnese, held the west of the town to the sea to head off succor 
from St. Omer. Marshes or places controlled by the French 
closed the circuit. Ten Dutch men-of-war and the fifteen 
frigates effectually shut the mouth of the port. The canals 
were bridged, and a line of circumvallation begun, which con- 
sisted of a palisaded and sodded wall and a ditch, the latter 
twelve feet wide and six feet deep, and another similar one 
forty paces from the first. The highest of the dune-hills 
were crowned by forts mounted with suitable guns, while on 
the wide beach, where the low tide afforded an approach, the 
defenses were held in place by a multitude of piles, left open 
to admit the waves. Eations were brought by the canals, 
and as this means was insufficient and the country roads had 
to be utilized, the inundation was arrested by driving piles at 



494 FIERCE FIGHTING. 

the mouths of the sluices, backing these up with huge stones, 
and then stopping the whole with a prodigious mass of earth. 
All useless horses and men were sent to the rear, and troops 
were moved from place to place as most needed. The distri- 
bution of rations, in which it was essential to economize, was 
made under Conde's own eye, for enough victual could not be 
got up, on account of the bad weather at sea and the deep 
roads on land. The men soon felt the lack of good food; 
and the bad weather and absence of material made it impos- 
sible suitably to house them. 

In five days from arrival of the army the lines were done ; 
and trenches were at once opened. Seeing that the health of 
the men could not long be kept up under the existing condi- 
tions, Conde pressed the siege with vigor, determining wisely 
to sacrifice men in assaults rather than lose an equal number 
by disease. He made a careful reconnoissance of the place, 
and concluded to open two approaches : one, which he was to 
conduct in person, covered the last bastion towards the sea 
on the east side ; the other was directed at the horn-work 
north of it under the two marshals. This was executed on 
the night of September 24-25, and sixty guns in all were 
mounted. 

Next day, the marshals delivered a fierce attack on a dune- 
hill near the horn-work, and captured it ; but Leyden made 
gallant efforts to retake it, and sharp fighting, lasting twenty- 
four hours, with heavy loss, resulted. At the approaches of 
Conde fighting was carried on daily with great determina- 
tion ; Leyden was active, and as fast as the French gained one 
point, they found fresh works to encounter ; behind every 
breach they uncovered a demi-lune. 

Meanwhile the Spaniards had concentrated their several 
armies, but they delayed action in the belief that the difficul- 
ties of the siege and the unfavorable elements would drive 



DUNKIRK SURRENDERS. 495 

Conde" from his task without their interference. After a 
careful reconnoissance of the French position, moreover, the 
Spanish commanders found the works too strong to make it 
wise to attack them ; and the fact that the prince of Orange 
was learned to be preparing a diversion to assist the French 
compelled them to carefully consider their plans. An attack 
on Furnes was proposed ; but the works at this place proved, 
on reconnoissance, to be likewise too strong to promise suc- 
cess. The unenterprising Spanish commanders eventually 
deemed it best to resort to relieving Dunkirk by sea; but 
this project being attempted, also failed ; for no sooner had 
the pilots caught sight of the Dutch and French squadrons 
cruising in the offing than they sought refuge in flight. 

On the night of October 1-2 a serious assault was made 
both on the bastion and the horn-work, and a lodgment was 
effectuated. Three days later the Spaniards made an at- 
tempt to break through the French lines near the beach, but 
failed. Leyden now saw that the end was approaching ; he 
listened to proposals, and on October 11 he capitulated with 
the honors of war. He had made a noble defense, but his 
friends on the outside had acted with a pitiful lack of vigor. 
Conde could ascribe his success to their indolence and want 
of common motive, as much as to his own energy. 

After this splendid triumph Conde undertook to relieve 
Courtray, which, lying as it did in the midst of the enemy's 
forces, needed a convoy of victual and powder to enable it to 
hold out. He sent the material down the Lys to Wervick by 
water, where it was discharged in such shape as to be quickly 
loaded on horses and carts. Shortly after midnight on the 
day appointed, the column of cavalry destined for the expedi- 
tion was ready ; each horseman took a bag behind his saddle ; 
the rest was laden on carts, and the column advanced be- 
tween Menin and Ypres, in each of which places the enemy 



496 COURTRAY RELIEVED. 

had forces. Before he had marched many leagues, the duke 
of Lorraine and Piccolomini came out to dispute his passage, 
but Conde held himself so compact and ready that, barring 
a rear-guard fight, which fell out to the advantage of the 
French, no serious attempt was made. The prince entered 
Courtray without the loss of a man. 

The return trip might be none the less perilous ; for Lor- 
raine and Piccolomini chose the best positions to cut Conde 
off, along whatever road he might choose. The column re- 
turned by the same route ; and Conde's countenance was so 
firm, he marched with so much good order, and held himself 
so ready for a combat, that the allied generals left him free 
exit. 

Beyond this handsome feat, nothing was done this year in 
the Netherlands which deserves especial mention. Conde's 
operations kept him away from the German theatre and left 
Turenne freehanded. 




Crusader's Cannon. 



XL. 

TURENNE AND WRANGEL. 1646-1647. 

In 1646 Turenne and Wrangel conducted a joint campaign. After some 
noxious delays due to political scheming of the rival courts, the French and 
Swedes joined in the Cologne district and advanced on the imperial army, 
which, under the archduke, lay on the Nidda. Arrived in presence, Turenne 
made a handsome movement around his opponent's left flank, and, cutting him 
off from his hase, advanced to the Danube. Thus compromised, after an 
attempt to march north, the archduke followed. The allies crossed the Dan- 
ube and besieged Augsburg, until the archduke returned and drove them off, 
taking post at Kirchheim. Here the allies again made a brilliant movement 
around the imperial left and marched on the interior, causing the Bavarian 
troops to separate from the imperial, and the elector was forced into a peace. 
In 1647 the emperor was quite alone ; but the political necessity of not allow- 
ing the empire to be crushed resulted in withdrawing Turenne and Wrangel 
from the completion of their work of 1646. Turenne returned to the left bank 
of the Rhine, and, after suppressing a mutiny among his German troops, con- 
fined himself under Mazarin's orders to minor operations in the Netherlands. 
In 1648 he again joined Wrangel, who meanwhile, single, had been forced 
back to the Weser. 

The campaign of 1646 in Germany, save an early inter- 
ruption by Mazarin, was conducted on Turenne's own plan, 
in connection with the Swedish general Wrangel. The latter 
was operating in Hesse and lower Saxony ; Turenne proposed 
to join him, and to manoeuvre in one body against the impe- 
rial army, half of which consisted of Bavarians, and which 
until now had usually stood and operated between them. 
This was a soundly conceived plan, looking to concentrated 
instead of scattering operations, and for a wonder Mazarin 
approved it. It was agreed with Torstenson and Wrangel 



498 - MAZARIN'S INTERFERENCE. 

that the Swedes should march by way of Hesse and the 
French by way of Nassau, to join hands. Turenne, who had 
wintered in the Rhine-Moselle region, concentrated in May, 
and was on the point of building a bridge of boats at Bacha- 
rach to cross the Rhine, when Mazarin suddenly forbade this 
movement, on the plea that the Bavarians had promised not 
to unite with the imperialists if the French would remain on 
the left bank of the Rhine ; and much as he disapproved the 
orders, Turenne was bound to obey. He saw through the 
promise, which the Bavarians had only given as a ruse ; for 
they did unite with the imperialists and move against the 
Swedes with scarcely a semblance of delay, taking post 
beyond the Main. This treachery again brought Mazarin's 
orders for action, but it altered the entire plan of cam- 
paign. The junction of French and Swedes must now be 
made by a circuit, for it was impossible to accomplish it by 
crossing at Bacharach. Turenne was compelled to throw 
a garrison of several regiments into Mainz, ford the Moselle 
some twenty miles above Coblentz, move through the electo- 
rate down to Cologne, and thence on Wesel and east to Lipp- 
stadt, keeping Wrangel apprised by couriers of his wherea- 
bouts. All this consumed more than a month of hard march- 
ing and much negotiation with neutral states, and Wrangel 
was meanwhile compelled to maintain himself by a system of 
manoeuvres and intrenched camps, which, relying on the fact 
that field-works were rarely attacked at that day, he very 
cleverly did, and thus saved himself from being drawn into a 
general engagement. 

When the enemy learned that Turenne was near at hand, 
they went into camp. Joining at Giessen, the allies had 
seven thousand infantry, ten thousand cavalry and sixty 
guns, with which they advanced to the vicinity of the enemy, 
but did not see their way clear to an attack. The imperial 



HANDSOME TURNING MOVEMENT. 



499 



army was under the command of Archduke Leopold William, 
and lay behind the Nidda in a strong position near Ilben- 
stadt. The allies camped near Friedburg. After a short 
delay for reconnoitring and preparation, they developed the 
plan of moving around the enemy's left, leaving Frankfort on 
their own left, and through the hill country to Heilbronn, 
thus forcing the imperialists back, or perhaps cutting them 
off from the Main, the 
Neckar and the Dan- 
ube. This, on due con- 
sideration, proved to be 
too much of a circuit, 
and the allies shortly 
adopted another route 
with the same object 
in view. About the 
middle of June they 
sent fifteen hundred 
cavalry to seize the 
passage of the Nidda 
at Bonames, and so 
soon as this was done 
they moved at daylight 
one day by their right around the left of the archduke to 
the Bonames ford. The archduke, unaware of what they in- 
tended, put his men under arms, but did not attack them on 
the march : it took many generations to teach soldiers the ad- 
vantage of falling on a marching column. The allies crossed 
the Nidda, drove back Werth's cavalry, and reached Buchheim 
the same day. From here they marched on the morrow to 
Windecken on the left bank of the Nidder, a confluent of the 
Nidda, and by taking and occupying it in force, cut the enemy 
off from access to the Main, except by a difficult circuit. 




Nidda Operation. 



500 THE ALLIES IN SWABIA. 

Thus separated from Franconia, Swabia and Bavaria, the 
archduke took a bold step and determined to move into the 
Hesse and Cologne district ; if followed, to go as far as West- 
phalia, and thus draw Turenne and Wrangel away north and 
relieve the imperial lands from invasion. But this manoeuvre 
was of no avail, for while the archduke started northerly on 
his errand, Turenne and Wrangel, guessing his intention, 
marched to Aschaffenburg, crossed the Main, — Turenne 
calling in his Mainz garrison, — and moved southward. There 
are few things which show the able soldier more than the 
power to retain his initiative, and to pay so much heed only 
to the enemy as will suffice for safety, and not so much as to 
weaken his own plans. This manoeuvre had been beautifully 
planned as well as admirably executed. It was, says Napo- 
leon, " plein d'audace et de sagesse." 

The allies had now no more to fear from the imperial 
army. To cover the country more effectually, they marched 
in two columns a number of miles apart, the French by way 
of Schorndorf and Lauingen, and the Swedes by Nordlingen 
and Donauworth, captured and garrisoned these towns, 
crossed the Danube, and found themselves in a rich and plen- 
tiful country, where they could victual their troops to great 
advantage, and had the enemy's land at their mercy. 

From the Danube Turenne sent a detachment of five hun- 
dred men to Augsburg, and was himself about to move on 
the place, when Wrangel, who had crossed the Lech, and in 
the blockade of Eain had met with stubborn resistance, called 
for aid. Turenne moved on Rain, whose capture his pres- 
ence assured, but he thereby forfeited his chance to take 
Augsburg, which the enemy meanwhile occupied with a force 
of fifteen hundred men from Memmingen. The archduke, 
moreover, gained time by this delay to return to the Danube 
and Lech from his attempted diversion north. It was an 



THE ARCHDUKE FEINTS. 501 

error on Turenne's part not to capture Augsburg first, and 
then to march to the assistance of Wrangel, who could just 
as well have waited. Rain once captured, Turenne and 
Wrangel determined to withdraw to the left bank of the 
Lech, and to undertake the siege of Augsburg ; but though 
their siege operations were as rapidly and skillfully pushed as 
without siege-guns they could be, and though they did indeed, 
at a loss of five or six hundred men, advance to the main 
ditch, the archduke got back through Franconia and the Up- 
per Palatinate, and before they could reduce it, reached Augs- 
burg by the right bank. Augsburg was then a short distance 
from the Lech, and the space and works between the town 
and river were made quite untenable by the enemy's heavy 
artillery. Though the marshals sought to drive the enemy 
away from his position, they were unable to do so, and the 
archduke forced the allies, by his constant and well-directed 
fire, from the siege and back to Lauingen, where they forti- 
fied a camp as well as strengthened the town defenses. 

Having gained so much, the archduke moved across the 
Lech and out on the road to Memmingen. Turenne and 
Wrangel believed that he was aiming at Ulm, Tubingen and 
Heilbronn, so as to pass around their right, manoeuvre them 
from their rich holding about Lauingen, and push them back 
to Franconia. This would have forfeited the results of the 
entire campaign, and have left them no satisfactory winter- 
quarters, nor the chance of accumulating material so as to 
afford promise of doing better in a new one. Moreover the 
imperial army was much superior in numbers, and better pro- 
vided for. The allied generals determined to move straight 
at the enemy despite that they were not well equipped, and 
to attack or manoeuvre in his front as circumstances war- 
ranted ; for the whole German campaign depended on what 
they should now do. They moved from Lauingen Noveni- 



502 



TURENNE OUTFLANKS HIM. 



ber 5 towards Memmingen, and next day after reaching it, 
on the enemy's camp at Kirchheim, which they reconnoitred. 
The fact that this camp was so well protected by marshes 
and ravines in front that it could not be attacked with suc- 
cess led to a superb manoeuvre. Leaving two thousand cav- 
alry in their front to hold them there, the allies moved, 
November 7, unnoticed past the enemy's left to Landsberg, 
in the archduke's rear, captured the Lech bridge at that 
point and all the imperial magazines in the place, which had 




Kirehlieim Operation. 

but one hundred men as garrison, and projected a column of 
three thousand cavalry against Munich. They had com- 
pletely cut the archduke off from Bavaria, which now lay 
open to their good pleasure. Thunderstruck, the archduke 
was compelled to follow. 

This brilliant proceeding threw the elector of Bavaria into 
a ferment of uneasiness, created dissatisfaction with the man- 
agement of the archduke and the Bavarian generals, and was 
the origin of the elector's making a separate peace with 
France. Cut off from his supplies, the archduke had diffi- 
culty in regaining his own base by crossing the Lech near 



A REMARKABLE CAMPAIGN. 503 

Thierhaupten. The imperial troops moved to Ratisbon, leav- 
ing the Bavarians to defend their own land, 

"Les manoeuvres pour deposter l'archiduc de son camp 
entre Memmingen et Landsberg," says Napoleon, " sont pleins 
d'audace, de sagesse et de genie ; elles sont fecondes en grands 
resultats; les militaires les doivent etudier." This praise 
is well earned ; the march on the Nidda and the march on 
Landsberg combine to make this campaign a marked one. 

The allies remained three weeks on the right bank of the 
Lech, and then, November 23, moved to Memmingen and 
into extended winter-quarters ; the French spread out as far 
as the Danube, and the Swedes towards the Lake of Con- 
stance. The French captured the castle of Tubingen, the 
Swedes took Bregenz and Meinau, but they failed to win 
Lindau. During the winter, however, Turenne and Wrangel, 
in a raid with six thousand cavalry, beat the enemy, who had 
rendezvoused at Rain, in a smart action, with heavy loss. 

The Congress of Ulm now assembled. In the following 
spring, March, 1647, a treaty was made by which the elector 
of Bavaria cut loose from the emperor, and Lauingen, Giin- 
delfingen, Hochstadt, Ulm, Donauwbrth, Memmingen and 
Uberlingen remained in the hands of the allies. This was 
to forestall a fresh alliance between the elector and the 
empire. 

This campaign is remarkable in several ways. The junc- 
tion of the Swedish and French armies in the presence of the 
imperial forces was admirably managed. The campaign was 
conducted by two armies, under two generals who remained 
in accord throughout, — a noteworthy circumstance, fit pro- 
totype of the cooperation of Marlborough and Eugene. The 
allies were weaker than the archduke, but they twice out- 
manoeuvred him. The decisive nature of the campaign was 
shown by its results, — the separation of Bavaria from the 



504 MAZARIN ARRESTS OPERATIONS. 

empire. The credit of the campaign is no doubt due to both 
Wrangel and Turenne. Napoleon only praises Turenne, but 
Wrangel must be given a share of the credit. Though in no 
sense Turenne's equal, he was a soldier beyond the average. 
No doubt Baner and Torstenson had done more brilliant 
work ; but they were not fortunate enough to be associated 
with a man like Turenne, and their labors came to naught. 

The emperor was now alone. He had no allies left. The 
Swedes and French were decidedly superior. The latter 
had in the field fourteen thousand infantry and twenty thou- 
sand cavalry; the emperor but five thousand foot and six 
thousand horse, under the Archduke Leopold. This was a 
small showing compared to what Wallenstein and Tilly had 
made ; but the whole of Germany was exhausted, both in 
men and means. 

Turenne and Wrangel were ready to reap the advantages 
of their last year's operations. But the policy of the French 
court prevented this. It would not do to permit the emperor, 
who was the head of the Catholic rulers, to be quite sub- 
dued. Turenne was ordered from Germany, where he would 
have done good work, to the Netherlands, to conduct with a 
limited force a slow and profitless campaign of sieges. All 
Turenne's protests were in vain, despite the best of reason- 
ing. Conde had been ordered with a larger force to Catalonia, 
where he was able to accomplish little. 

On the way to his new field of operations, Turenne had 
taken Hochst, Steinheim, Aschaffenburg and other places; 
had crossed the Rhine at Philipsburg, and marched into the 
country between Strasburg and Zabern. But the German 
cavalry, late Weimar regiments, General Rosen command- 
ing, declined to advance further until paid six months' arrears 
then owing them. They had an idea that they could do 
better by enlisting in the emperor's service. Turenne had no 



CIVILIAN MANAGEMENT. 505 

funds. The mutineers in a body, under Rosen, recrossed the 
Rhine. Turenne followed them with part of his force, and 
for several days endeavored to pacify Rosen and them. But 
finding clemency of no avail, he carefully laid his plans, 
arrested Rosen at Ettlingen, and sent him under guard to 
Philipsburg. Thus left without a leader, part of the muti- 
neers gave in ; part marched towards the Tauber country. 
Turenne attacked these, killed two hundred and dispersed the 
rest. Some were reorganized ; some went into the Swedish 
service. 

In quelling this mutiny Turenne had lost much time. 
Mazarin's policy had negatived all the utility of the French 
army for the year, and had practically lost the German regi- 
ments. It was typical civilian management. 

There is no pretense that the management of the affairs of 
nations would be safer in the hands of the army commanders 
than in those of the statesmen. Such a theory in America 
would tend towards the substitution of autocracy for republi- 
canism. Those versed in statecraft ought to be able to hold 
the nation's helm to better advantage than men educated 
solely to arms ; but it is the misfortune of generals that the 
real or alleged necessities of the state must so often inter- 
fere with military operations ; and as we are looking only at 
the military side of history, we are compelled at times to lay 
the blame of the failure of campaigns upon those statesmen 
who use war, as they often must, not to succeed from a purely 
military standpoint, but as subsidiary to their own schem- 
ing, to win or to risk loss as may at the moment be most 
expedient. 

It is often said that our operations during the civil war 
were interfered with by the Washington politicians. So 
they were, from a soldier's point of view ; but the soldier 
looks at things from but one side ; there were many other 



506 OPERATIONS REOPENED. 

and weighty questions to be considered, which involved not 
only success in the field, but the integrity of the nation ; and 
it may be said that, on the whole, the political management 
was good ; certainly so according to the light the country's 
leaders then had, if not according to what shines on us now. 

After this serious delay Turenne reorganized what was left 
of the Weimar regiments, and, sending part of his cavalry 
to Flanders, he moved into Luxemburg, where he was ordered 
to pursue a negative role, and to hold the enemy's attention 
by the capture of a few small places. This woeful policy of 
the prime minister placed his allies, the Swedes, in bad case. 
The Bavarians were again prevailed on to join the emperor ; 
took from the Swedes all their hard-won conquests, and 
forced them back to the Weser country, seizing all the terri- 
tory so laboriously gotten from them by Turenne and Wran- 
gel. Then, after all was gone, and there was danger that 
the balance might tip in the other direction to the disadvan- 
tage of France, Turenne received orders from the court again 
to join the Swedes. This well illustrates the idea of civilian 
management. So far as statesmanship goes, this may (or 
may not) have been good policy ; but from a military stand- 
point, how lamentable ! 

Turenne moved rapidly on the Main, raised the siege of 
Frankenthal, marched on Mainz, captured the castle of Fal- 
kenstein, crossed the Ehine at Oppenheim on a bridge of 
boats, and in January, 1648, went into winter-quarters in 
Hesse-Darmstadt. But as the Swedes were not ready in 
numbers or equipment for an immediate campaign, Turenne 
retired to Strasburg the same month. 




Breech-loading Portable Gun. (15th Century.) 



XLI. 

THE THIRTY YEAES' WAR ENDS. 1648. 

Tueenne joined Wrangel in 1648 in Franconia, and after a slight disagree- 
ment as to plans, the two operated towards the Danube. Crossing at Lauingen, 
they followed the imperialists up to Zumarshausen, and in May drove them 
back to the Lech with heavy loss, despite their fine rear-guard fighting under 
Montecuculi. They then crossed the Lech and moved to the Isar, the enemy 
falling back behind the Inn. Following across the Isar, they occupied the 
whole country up to the Inn, which rapid river, having no pontoons, they were 
unable to pass. To punish the elector for last year's treachery, they devastated 
all Bavaria in their control. They were now on the edge of the emperor's 
hereditary lands ; but a new imperial army arriving at Passau on the lower 
Inn, the allies retired to the lower Isar, whither the imperialists followed, and 
both sides intrenched camps. As autumn came to an end, the allies, whose bold 
operations had contributed effectually to the Peace of Westphalia, retired 
behind the Lech. During this campaign Turenne had fed his men on the coun- 
try without interfering with his strategic manoeuvres. In August of this year, 
after a fruitless campaign in Spain, Conde* was transferred to the Netherlands, 
and defeated Archduke Leopold at Lens. 

In February, 1648, when Wrangel got ready to move and 
so notified Turenne, the latter, though not yet well equipped, 
crossed the Rhine at Mainz and joined the Swedish army in 
Franconia. The allies had nine thousand foot, twelve thou- 
sand horse and nearly fifty guns ; not a large force, to be 
sure, but one whose strength lay in its commanders. Turenne 
frankly declared to the elector of Bavaria that he should 
treat him as for his late treachery he deserved to be treated ; 
and the allies crossed the Main and followed the imperial 
army towards the Danube, as far as Ingolstadt, until the 
latter went into camp under the guns of the fortress. The 



508 



RECONNOITRING THE ENEMY. 



two allied generals now for the first time disagreed as to 
plans. Wrangel wanted to move on the Upper Palatinate, 
Turenne to stay in Swabia, as being a better territory to 
victual troops, the former section having been eaten out. 
The disagreement in no wise interrupted good-will, though 
there was no inconsiderable friction among many of the 
minor generals, which it required all Turenne's patient per- 
suasiveness to allay. The French army moved to the Bam- 
berg country, Wrangel toward his goal, and after a short 
separation, the latter becoming aware that without Turenne 
he was helpless, the allies again joined at Rothemburg on the 
Tauber, and both armies moved to Wurtemberg, and took up 
quarters at Reutlingen and Goppingen. This tribute to 

Turenne by Wrangel 
shows where lay the 
greater strength and 
ability. 

Hearing that the 
enemy was not far 
from Ulm, the allies 
marched toward the 
Danube, while the im- 
perialists took posi- 
tion between that place and Augsburg, at Zumarshausen, 
ten miles from the river. Arrived at Lauingen, Turenne 
and Wrangel personally headed three thousand horse and 
advanced on a reconnoissance across the river, to within no 
great distance of the enemy. Hidden by a marsh through 
which they threaded, they ascertained that the imperialists 
were carelessly stationed ; were pasturing their horses, and 
had no outposts or patrols. They determined on attack, and 
sheltering the three thousand horse where they stood, sent 
back orders to the two armies to advance at night in light 




Zumarshausen Operation. 



A FINE RETREAT. 509 

order, leaving the train behind. The orders were executed 
with exceptional speed ; the allied divisions reached the scene, 
were quickly rested, and again ployed into column ; and at 
2 a. m. on May 17, they approached the enemy's lines, the 
French army in the lead with a van of cavalry. But, alive 
to their coming, the enemy had determined not to await 
attack, had thrown out thirty squadrons to cover their move- 
ments and protect the train, had burned their camp, and were 
already in full retreat. Count Holzapfel and Count Grons- 
feld, who commanded the imperial and Bavarian forces 
respectively, after the experience of 1646, had feared to be 
cut off from Augsburg by another turning manoeuvre, and 
had marched at night, the armies in the van followed by the 
train. The moral effect of the 1646 operations had already 
half won this campaign. The enemy's rear-guard was under 
command of Montecuculi, with but sixteen hundred horse, 
eight hundred musketeers and four guns. The route lay 
through a wooded and marshy territory, and the train could 
be got forward only with extreme difficulty. Following hard 
upon, the French van of cavalry at 7 A. M. fell sharply on 
the rear-guard, under Montecuculi, who, though reinforced 
by about one thousand men under Holzapfel, and though hold- 
ing his own with great ability and fierce determination, was 
forced back in confusion. Count Holzapfel was killed, and 
Montecuculi barely escaped capture. 

The French thus kept the rear busy while "Wrangel sent 
his horse forward on either flank of the marching rear-guard 
column. The main army was prevented by the laboring train 
from coming back to the assistance of the rear-guard, and of 
this whole body of infantry, thirteen hundred were taken 
prisoners, while the rest dispersed ; eight guns and a number 
of standards and wagons were captured. The horse cut its 
way through to the main body. At night the imperial army, 



510 HEARTY PURSUIT. 

hard pressed by the allies, took position in much confusion 
behind the little river Schmutter. Turenne and Wrangel 
endeavored to force the passage, but they had no guns, and it 
was stoutly defended by Duke Ulrich of Wurtemberg, who 
held his men together under extremely severe losses. As the 
troops and artillery had not yet got up, the attack was put off 
till daylight next day, May 18, the enemy meanwhile being 
cannonaded by what guns happened to be on hand. But 
during the night the enemy, now under Termor and Grons- 
feld, retired behind the Lech to the protection of the guns of 
Augsburg, having lost twenty-three hundred men in killed, 
wounded and prisoners, eight guns, six standards and three 
hundred and fifty-three wagons. The loss of the allies was 
also heavy. The enemy would scarcely have lost more men 
in a general engagement had they stood their ground ; and 
the allies had accomplished much with small means. 

The main Franco-Swedish column had not been able to 
follow, and the bulk of the fighting had been by the van. 
As a sample of stout pursuit it was excellent, and the 
defense by Montecuculi during the retreat, and that of Ulrich 
at the Schmutter, were of the best. 

The allied marshals rested a day, — May 18, — to enable 
the main force to come up, and on the next Turenne and 
Wrangel moved on Rain. The Bavarians burned the bridge 
over the Lech, and took up the old position Tilly had held 
sixteen years before against Gustavus Adolphus ; but after 
some cannonading they retired at night on Munich. The 
allies restored the bridge, crossed the Lech, leaving two thou- 
sand men to hold the bridge, and, sending one thousand horse 
to harass the enemy's retreat, moved on Neuburg, and then, 
June 12, on Freising on the Isar. The Bavarians fell back 
behind the Inn, sending strong infantry detachments to 
Munich and Ingolstadt and garrisoning Wasserburg, while 



THE ALLIES ON THE INN. 511 

the elector personally went to Salzburg and thence to the 
Tyrol. The allies now crossed the Isar, occupied Landshut, 
broke the bridge at Freising — preferring to use that at 
Landshut — and pushed towards Wasserburg, which, however, 
proved to be so strongly garrisoned that it could not be well 
taken. Marching downstream to Miihldorf to cross the Inn, 
they were again balked, having no pontoons, and the river 
being exceptionally wide, deep and rapid, with a rocky bed, 
in which piles could hardly be driven. 

Turenne and Wrangel had now manoeuvred and forced 
their way to the very boundary of Upper Austria, had taken 
possession of all Bavaria, and had rationed their troops on 
the country. As a lesson to the elector for his treachery in 
breaking his treaty, all the overrun portion of Bavaria was 
devastated. This was done with no light touch, and the 
Bavarians, who sixteen years before had prayed openly in 
their churches to be delivered from the " Swedish Devil," 
found in Turenne and Wrangel a foe as bitter and unrelent- 
ing as Gustavus Adolphus had been upright and placable. 

If they should cross the Inn, the allies would find a great 
deal of support, for the population of Upper Austria, as for 
many years it had been, was still in the mood for revolt from 
the emperor. This advance they were prepared to make and 
no doubt would have done, but for a sudden turn in fortune, 
which, as usual all through the Thirty Years' War, seemed 
to protect the hereditary possessions of the emperor. Field- 
Marshal Piccolomini and General Enkevort early in July had 
assembled ten thousand foot and fifteen thousand horse with 
a lot of guns at Passau and Wilshofen, had crossed the Dan- 
ube and moved to Eggenfelden, on the allies' left flank, 
which stood near Miihldorf. Thus threatened, Turenne and 
Wrangel found it essential to retire, which they did via 
Landshut to Dingolfing on the lower Isar, where they in- 



512 PEACE OF WESTPHALIA. 

trenched a camp and built a bridge. Piccolomini and Enke- 
vort did the like near Landau, a dozen miles below. 

The habit of intrenching was with Turenne, who preferred 
the offensive in all cases, a mere relic of the system of the 
day. We shall, in the next century, see it disappear in 
favor of battles in the open ; and yet even Marlborough and 
Eugene did not quite cut loose from the habits of thought 
they had inherited. 

In this situation the rival armies remained till midsummer. 
About this time the imperial forces endeavored to entrap a 
Swedish outpost at a village near their camp, and made a threat 
as if to approach the allies. But nothing came of either 
attempt. There were one or two attacks on the other's posi- 
tion by either army, — particularly one on the enemy's camp 
by Wrangel with his batteries ; but they were fruitless. 

Piccolomini was now compelled to send reinforcements to 
Bohemia to save Prague, which had been raided by Konigs- 
mark from the Franco-Swedish army, and Turenne and 
Wrangel by the end of August had exhausted the victual of 
the vicinity of Dingolfing. They therefore moved via the 
Landshut bridge to Moosburg back of the Isar ; the enemy 
followed and took up a new camp at Landshut. For more 
than a month — till the end of September — inactivity 
reigned. Then Turenne and Wrangel retired behind the 
Lech, and on October 11 established themselves between 
Augsburg and Landsberg at Schwabisch-Munchen. Hence 
they marched to Donauwbrth, crossed the Danube and moved 
on Eichstadt. The imperial army followed from the Isar, as 
far as the Lech. 

Shortly after came the Peace of Westphalia, to which 
Turenne's and Wrangel's operations had much contributed. 
Turenne took up winter-quarters in Swabia, and Wrangel 
near Nurnberg. 



WAR CONTINUES. 513 

This last joint campaign of Turenne and Wrangel worthily 
crowned the Thirty Years' War. After those of Gustavus 
Adolphus, this and the campaign of 1646 are the most note- 
worthy and the most productive of results. The allied 
generals, says Napoleon, moved through the length and 
breadth of Germany with a rapidity and decision unknown 
to war at that time. Their success came from their ability 
and proper method, from the strong feeling for the offensive 
which characterized Turenne, and from the boldness and 
intelligence of their every step. 

The armies were fed largely on the country. This was 
possible from their small number, and the usual friendliness 
of the population during the advance. But in retreat the 
allies still found the magazines they had prepared absolutely 
essential, and they mixed the system of requisitions with that 
of magazines in an effective manner. Since Gustavus' time, 
the magazine system had been the only one in use. Gustavus' 
victualing was done by magazines and regularly-paid-for 
contributions from the territories traversed. Turenne made 
war nourish war, — a method which is, however, incompatible 
with the humanity inculcated by Gustavus. From a military 
aspect, the one system contributes to speed, the other to 
security. Turenne had small armies to feed, and could 
easily live on requisitions from the surrounding towns. 
The true system is a proper combination of the two : maga- 
zines at proper places on the line of advance and at places of 
possible refuge, and requisitions — paid or enforced — on for- 
ward and flank movements and on retreats. 

The last years of the Thirty Years' War were mixed up 
with the war of France against Spain in such a manner as 
materially to enlarge the theatre and scope of operations. 
The war was no longer one of Protestant Germany against 
the Catholic emperor to secure freedom of worship. It be- 



514 ROHAN AND CONDE. 

came a general European war, waged between France and 
the Hapsburgs for the supreme control of European politics. 

France was shortsighted in many ways. She constantly 
divided her forces so as, for instance, in 1635 to have armies 
in Germany and the Netherlands, in northern Italy, in the 
Valteline, in Roussillon and in Spain, not to count immense 
resources spent upon the navy. The result naturally was 
that instead of accomplishing results so that a peace with 
Spain should accompany the general Peace of Westphalia 
in 1648, the Franco-Spanish war dragged along a dozen 
years more. 

Almost the only noteworthy operations during this whole 
period occurred in 1635 to 1637 in the Valteline, where the 
Duke of Rohan defended that territory with a small force 
against Spanish troops advancing from northern Italy, and 
against an imperial army which sought to join the former by 
way of the valley of the Adda. As a sample of mountain 
warfare, these operations desewve study. 

In 1647 Conde was sent to Catalonia, where he failed in 
the siege of Lerida, owing to lack of men and material. The 
operations have no especial interest, save to recall those of 
Caesar on the same terrain. The great Roman won, as he 
always did, in the end ; the Frenchman lost ; but it is per- 
haps no blot on a captain's record to fail in Spain, that 
graveyard of military reputations. It needed the genius that 
inspired a Hamilcar or a Hannibal to succeed in such a 
country. 

In 1648 Conde was again in the Low Countries, and at 
the end of May took the town of Ypres after a siege of two 
weeks. His biographers make much of many of Conde's 
operations which wear, on the whole, an air of triviality ; and 
without underrating this great soldier, it is noticeable that 
much of Conde's best work was done when associated with 



CONDE MANCEUVRING. 



515 



Turenne, and his worst when opposed to this commander. 
Later in the year Conde won a battle at Lens over Archduke 
Leopold. The civil turmoils of the Fronde had begun, and 
the Spaniards believed that a great battle won would give 
them a permanent footing in France, if not indeed access to 
the capital. The archduke had eighteen thousand men and 
thirty-eight guns, and the army was really commanded under 
him by Baron Beck. He had, after taking the town of Lens, 
marshaled his line facing northerly, with the right leaning on 
that place, and the forces posted on high and excellent defen- 








Battle of Lens. 



sive ground. He hoped that Conde would attack, as he had 
at Allerheim, and in such case felt confident of success. But 
Conde, who was approaching from the Ypres and Dunkirk 
country, and who had but fourteen thousand men, of which 
six thousand were horse, and less artillery, was too circum- 
spect to blindly attack; though he drew up in line, he de- 
clined an assault, and strove by every means to lure his oppo- 
nent down into the plain. The armies lay in parallel order ; 
the day of grand-tactics had not come. Finding that his 
efforts produced no result, Conde determined to fall back for 



516 A BRILLIANT VICTORY. 

forage and victual to La Bassee, north of Lens, and at day- 
break on August 20 he moved to the rear in six columns. 
Thus tempted, Beck sallied out with his light horse and 
attacked the French, badly defeating the cavalry rear-guard. 
Conde" answered with his heavy cavalry ; but this, too, after a 
preliminary success, was beaten back. Under cover of this 
engagement, and seeing that he could do no less, Conde 
faced about, and drew up on the heights half way between 
Lens and Neus, a village on the road to La Bassee, mean- 
while essaying a charge in person to extricate his heavy horse, 
which was hard pressed. Though ill delivered and driven 
back, the general result of the entire series of combats was to 
give Conde time to marshal his line ; and what was really a 
lost opening had induced the Spaniards to leave their advan- 
tageous post in the expectation of improving a victory already 
half won. The cavalry which had been beaten Conde wisely 
put in second line, and then advanced to attack the archduke, 
who still lay on higher ground than the French, but not as 
favorably as before. The cavalry lines which opened the 
battle came into very close contact, — four paces, say the 
old records, — before a pistol shot was fired. Then the horse- 
men clashed, and while the foot in the centre of each army 
advanced, the squadrons swayed to and fro in the usual con- 
fusion of a parallel battle. Finally, on both wings, the 
French horse won the day, and was able to turn inward on 
the Spanish foot, with which the French corps de bataitte 
was already fiercely engaged. 

The battle was gained. The enemy lost four thousand 
killed, and six thousand prisoners. The rest of the army 
broke up, and nearly all the officers, — some eight hundred, 
— all the guns and one hundred and twenty standards were 
taken. Lens made a fourth spendid victory in Conde's neck- 
lace of gems, though it was by impulsive fighting and not 



VALUE OF GUSTAVUS' WORK. 517 

manoeuvring that it was won. It checkmated the Spanish 
efforts for the year. Beck died of his wounds. 

The operations from the battle of Liitzen to the Peace of 
Westphalia redound almost as much to the glory of Gustavus 
Adolphus as those which he himself conducted in Germany. 
The manoeuvres of his successors were indeed brilliant, but 
they lacked the solidity and the results of those of the great 
Swede. What Gustavus did stayed done ; and it was he 
who built the foundation of the structure of Protestant success 
in Germany. A century of operations such as those which 
preceded and succeeded his could not contribute as much to 
the cause as did his manoeuvres in the few months he re- 
mained upon the theatre of war. It was exhaustion pure and 
simple which put an end to the Thirty Years' War ; that the 
end was in favor of Protestantism was solely due to what 
Gustavus had done. 

The Peace of Westphalia was the fruit of negotiations 
which dragged on from 1643 to 1648. Sweden received, as 
a fief of the empire, all western Pomerania, Stettin, Garz, 
Damm, Gollnow, Wollin and Usedom in eastern Pomerania, 
Wismar, the secularized bishoprics (not the city) of Bremen 
and of Werden, and an indemnity of five million rix dollars. 
She became a member of the Diet with three votes. France 
received outright (not as a fief of the empire) Metz, Toul, 
Verdun, Pignerol, Breisach, about all Alsace, and the right 
to garrison Philipsburg. Strasburg remained free, as did 
some other towns. Hesse-Cassel got Hersfeld, Schaumberg, 
the fiefs of the foundation of Minden and six hundred thou- 
sand rix dollars. Brandenburg was indemnified for her loss 
of Pomerania by the bishoprics of Halberstadt, Minden and 
Camin, and by Magdeburg after the death of August of 
Saxony. Mecklenburg and Brunswick received small terri- 
torial rights. 



518 



TERMS OF PEACE. 



The secular and ecclesiastical affairs of the empire were 
rearranged so as to place Catholics and Protestants on a sub- 
stantial equality ; and the ownership of ecclesiastical estates 
was to remain forever as it existed January 1, 1624. The 
Austrian and Bohemian Protestants gained nothing; but 
elsewhere freedom of worship was fairly well established. 
The imperial courts in the several Circles were to be equally 
divided between Protestants and Catholics. 

The peace was guaranteed by France and Sweden. 




Three-barreled Carbine. (16th Century.) 



XLII. 

CONDE AGAINST TURENNE. 1650-1656. 

The war between France and Spain went on, and the civil war of the Fronde 
grew to larger proportions. Conde" was imprisoned, and Turenne, seeking aid 
from Spain, led an army into France from the Netherlands. After some insig- 
nificant operations the French laid siege to Rh^tel, and Turenne attempted to 
relieve it ; but he was met by Duplessis and seriously defeated. In 1651 
Turenne returned to Paris under an amnesty. In 1652 the Fronde broke out 
again, and Conde" took up arms against the court, while Turenne defended it. 
The court moved from place to place, under escort of the army, while the 
princes held Paris, and a campaign of manoeuvres south of the capital resulted. 
The duke of Lorraine was called in by Mazarin as an ally, but he went over to 
Cond^, and was got rid of only after he had collected much plunder in France. 
La Ferte" and Turenne later transferred the war to near Paris, and in July a 
battle was fought in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, in which Conde" was only 
saved by being admitted through the gate% into the capital. Later he was 
crowded to the frontier, and the court returned to Paris. In 1653 Conde" was 
in the Spanish service and Turenne opposed him ; Conde" made several attempts 
to march on Paris, but Turenne cleverly kept between him and the capital, 
and checkmated all his efforts. 

Despite the Peace of Westphalia, the war between France 
and Spain went on, and the unhappy French were consumed 
not only by a harassing conflict upon their borders, but by 
the still more disheartening civil war of the Fronde at home. 
Stripped of its complex character, the Fronde was an insur- 
rection under some of the French princes against Mazarin's 
government for Anne of Austria, queen regent during the 
minority of Louis XIV. Political difficulties during this 
period obliged Turenne to flee to Holland until an amnesty 
was declared at its close. His political course at the opening 



520 



THE FRONDE. 




of the struggle has been much criticised ; but it was a time to 
try men's souls, as every civil war must do, and there were 
multitudes of honest men misled. 

In 1650 the internal trouble grew apace ; Conde and 
others of like sentiments were seized and imprisoned by Maz- 
arin in the castle of Vincennes. Turenne sought to head the 



TURENNE INVADES FRANCE. 521 

old troops of Conde at the castle of Stenay, on the Meuse, for 
the purpose of rescue, but, unable to gain over more than 
a few Frenchmen, he entered into negotiations with Arch- 
duke Leopold William, governor-general of the Spanish 
Netherlands, who gave him two hundred thousand thalers to 
raise troops, and fifty thousand thalers a month for rations, 
together with a personal subvention, and further agreed, in 
addition to what Turenne should enroll, to furnish and keep 
two thousand foot and three thousand horse under the latter's 
orders. Having reached a further understanding with the 
Spaniards, looking towards the forcing of a peace by Spain 
on Mazarin, and having made of the queen regent a re- 
spectful but fruitless demand for negotiations, Turenne led 
a Spanish army into France. Having, with the money fur- 
nished him, gathered together a few thousand men, and with 
these joined the Spanish army put on foot according to agree- 
ment, he crossed the border from the Netherlands. The 
Spanish idea was to invade Picardy while Turenne should 
invade Champagne ; but Turenne insisted on marching in one 
body, to seize strong places in the interior, and to work in 
unison with the adherents of the Fronde, who had armed in 
Bordeaux and elsewhere. The small fortresses of Le Catelet 
and Guise were invested in June, but Guise could not be 
taken, owing to the presence of the royal French army, 
and to a very rainy season which made operations all but im- 
possible. The allies drew back, a week later captured La 
Capelle, and thence moved to Vervins, where the archduke 
took command. The rival armies were of about equal 
strength, ten to twelve thousand foot and six to seven thou- 
sand horse. Turenne induced the Spanish army to move 
forward to the Aisne, taking and garrisoning Chateau Por- 
cien and Khetel, and the French army retired to Kheims. 
Turenne suggested the advisability of moving along the Aisne, 



522 RETREAT FROM RHETEL. 

turning this army by the left, and marching straight on Paris 
to free the imprisoned Fronde leaders, Conde among them ; but 
the Spanish commander had not the stomach to agree to such 
a manoeuvre, which was not perhaps as discreet as it was bold, 
— though indeed in its very boldness lay safety, — and re- 
fused even to cross the Aisne. The princes were transferred 
to another prison near Orleans. But Turenne undertook a 
grand reconnoissance towards Fismes with three thousand 
horse and five hundred musketeers, attacked ten regiments of 
French cavalry which were stationed there and threw them 
back on Soissons, capturing five hundred prisoners. The 
Spaniards, sending a detachment to La Ferte-Milon, at 
Turenne's suggestion, then marched on Fismes, to a position 
between the French army at Rheims and the capital ; but, for 
what reasons cannot be said, took no advantage of their 
favorable situation, further than to undertake a month's nego- 
tiations with the duke of Orleans, which eventuated in no- 
thing. The Spaniards then retired to the east and besieged 
Mouzon on the Meuse. After a seven weeks' siege Mouzon 
surrendered, the Spanish troops retired to winter-quarters in 
Flanders, and Turenne remained with his eight thousand 
men near Montfaucon, in the hills between the Meuse and 
Aisne. The French army sat down idly in Champagne, and 
finally, in December, laid siege to Rhetel. Turenne hurried 
to its relief, but as he arrived too late, the place having sur- 
rendered December 13, he started to return to Montfaucon, 
marching by his left. 

Intent on bringing Turenne to battle, the French com- 
mander, Marshal Duplessis, followed him south from Rhetel, 
and reached his front December 15. Though Turenne pre- 
ferred to retire, he nevertheless drew up on the heights to the 
left of the valley route he was pursuing. Duplessis did the 
like on the right of the valley, and both armies in parallel 



TURENNE DEFEATED. 



523 



order marched at half a cannon-shot distance by the flank 
five or six miles along the valley. Inasmuch as he could not 
well avoid battle, and observing that on the French right 
flank there was but little cavalry, Turenne drew his own horse 
together and marched down into the valley to turn the enemy 
near the Champ Blanc. At first the operation looked like a 
success, as the French cavalry of the right wing was some- 
what dispersed ; but the second line remained firm, and 
Turenne's troops — mostly raw levies — grew unsteady. The 




Battle of Champ Blanc. 



same thing took place on Turenne's right, where an attack at 
first promised success and then miscarried. So soon as he 
perceived the weakening of Turenne's troops, Duplessis drew 
some cavalry from his right, brought it over to his left, and 
charged in with a vigor which completed Turenne's defeat. 
The men behaved badly, and the great French soldier was 
routed. He lost the bulk of his force in prisoners, several 
general officers, and by good luck only saved himself by a 
flight with five hundred cavalry south through Champagne to 
Bar le Due. Here he reassembled part of his troops and 



524 CONDE ATTACKS TURENNE. 

moved back of the Meuse to Montmedy, where he went into 
winter-quarters. Napoleon's criticism on his engaging in 
battle does not seem to be sound. He was justified in fight- 
ing, even though the enemy outnumbered him ; in fact, he 
could scarcely avoid accepting battle, for Duplessis forced it 
on him ; but luck was against him, and his men were not his 
old soldiers, on whom he could rely. 

During this campaign Turenne was dependent on the 
archduke, and could not operate on his own ideas, though 
Leopold had nothing to do with the defeat at Champ Blanc. 

In the next year (1651) Turenne returned to Paris, a gen- 
eral amnesty having been granted. The French princes 
were freed, and Mazarin was banished. Turenne sought to 
patch up a peace between France and Spain, but, unable to 
do so, he returned to France. 

In 1652 the Fronde troubles again broke out, and the 
court was obliged to leave the capital and seek refuge with 
the army. Conde, who was the leader of the party of the 
princes, sought to induce his old brother soldier, Turenne, to 
join him in operating against the government of Mazarin, 
who. had returned after a short banishment. But Turenne 
refused, and he and Marshal Hocquincourt, with nine thou- 
sand men each, mostly horse, were sent to operate against 
Conde, who had taken command of the army of the Fronde 
that had been under the leadership of the duke of Beaufort, 
and, fourteen thousand strong, lay in position between Mon- 
targis and the Loire. 

Conde held Montargis, and lay near by. Turenne was 
camped at Briare, with Hocquincourt at Bleneau, covering 
the peripatetic court which was sojourning at Gien. Their 
cavalry was dispersed for ease of foraging. Learning that 
Conde was approaching in person, the two royal generals 
were about to concentrate their forces further to the north. 



CONDE CHECKED. 



525 



If he would strike either singly, Conde had no time to lose ; 
and having ascertained their situation by a spy, he made a 
night attack on Hocquincourt, whom, leading a small body of 
horse with his accustomed rapidity and success, he surprised 
and drove in disorder from his post. He then turned towards 
Briare, hoping to take Turenne unawares in the same man- 
ner. But the latter had 
caught the alarm, and was 
already in line between 
Ozouer and Bleneau, where 
he held a position he had 
previously reconnoitred, and 
which was the sole route by 
which Conde could advance, 
a defile between a wood and 
a marsh. Conde was checked 
at this point after a smart 
combat ; Hocquincourt, find- 
ing that he was not pur- 
sued, rejoined his colleague 
by a circuit, and Turenne, 
whose plan was to guard the 
court rather than conduct 
a brilliant offensive, retired 
to Gien. His total loss had been six hundred killed and six 
hundred prisoners, but Hocquincourt had forfeited his guns ; 
Conde's loss was but four hundred men. Had Conde won 
in this first operation, the court would have been in extremis; 
but the prince retired to Chatillon with his army and person- 
ally went to Paris, where he arrived April 11, and, though 
he had accomplished naught, assumed the role of conqueror 
among his many adherents in the capital. 

On learning Conde's absence, Turenne at once moved to 




Operation of Gien. 



526 TURENNE ABLY MANCEUVRES. 

Auxerre. His (or Mazarin's) plan was to fix the theatre of 
war as near Paris as practicable. From Auxerre, by an 
able and rapid series of marches, Turenne kept on to Sens 
and Corbeil. Tavannes, in command of Conde's army, could 




Paris-Orleans Country. 

do nothing to arrest his movement, and when Turenne finally 
camped at Arpajon he had cut Tavannes from Paris and his 
chief. Tavannes advanced to Etampes. Thus isolated from 
his army, Conde, with but a few recruits, sought to place in 
a state of defense St. Cloud, Charenton, Neuilly and other 



THE DUKE OF LORRAINE. 527 

suburbs of Paris. Negotiations — largely underhanded — 
were meanwhile afoot, in which Mazarin on one side and 
Conde on the other acted the principal roles, each vainly 
seeking to outwit the other. 

Turenne kept up his activity. He attacked Tavannes dur- 
ing a military fete at Etampes, and did him damage to the 
extent of two or three thousand men ; but Hocquincourt man- 
aged his part of the enterprise so ill that Mazarin concluded 
to send him to Flanders, and to rely solely on Turenne, who 
thus assembled under his own colors twelve thousand men. 
Tavannes had but eight thousand. 

Meanwhile Conde took St. Denis. The court went to 
Melun, and Turenne laid siege to Etampes. Tavannes de- 
fended the place furiously. Once out of material, he was 
about to surrender, when Conde, from Paris, succeeded in 
throwing a convoy of munitions into the town. The king 
sought to exert the influence of his personal presence, but in 
vain; Tavannes pleaded sickness and would not appear on 
the walls to parley with Louis, and the town was again on 
the point of surrender, when the duke of Lorraine came 
upon the scene. This treacherous ally had been called in 
by Mazarin, who imagined that he could control him ; but 
no sooner had Lorraine safely passed the army of La Ferte 
than he declared for Conde, and was warmly welcomed in 
Paris. 

It seemed as if Conde, with the duke of Lorraine's army, 
could now move to Etampes and deal the last blow to 
Turenne. But though the duke was both a knave and a fool, 
he was not to be easily led ; plunder was more in his line 
than fighting ; and his army merely passed through the land, 
ravaging right and left, finally reaching Villeneuve St. 
Georges. Mazarin began again to negotiate with him ; 
Turenne advanced towards him ; and on the promise of the 



528 CONDE NEAR PARIS. 

royal army giving up the siege of Etampes and permitting 
the duke to leave with the booty which he had gathered all 
along his route, the new-comer was got rid of. Turenne, who 
had lost nearly four thousand men in the siege of Etampes, 
and was on the eve of success, was thus by political necessity 
compelled to retire; but he moved to a position near the 
duke of Lorraine, prepared to force him to carry out his 
shameful contract. By a sharp march across the Seine, he 
reached the duke's camp, and at a risk of pushing him to 

battle, obliged him to sign 
a new agreement to leave 
for good, and actually to 
march away before Conde,^ 
who was on the road, could 
join him. The calling in 
of an outsider had merely 
resulted in ravaging a 
large section of France, 
and had done no good to 
either party. The duke of 
Lorraine alone had made 
a gain. He had moved away with an enormous amount of 
plunder, the result of Mazarin's interference in the military 
operations. 

Conde, with his army of but five thousand men, was in 
camp at St. Cloud. He had possession of the sole near-by 
bridge over the Seine, and by crossing to one or the other 
side could thus hold head the better to Turenne's eleven 
thousand men ; and the latter, though he advanced into the 
vicinity, for the moment attempted nothing against the 
prince. The queen, however, had disgarnished the frontiers 
and created a new army under La Ferte, equal to Turenne's, 
which was designed to operate in conjunction with him. 




Vicinity of Paris. 



CONDE TRAPPED. 529 

Turenne had moved to Lagny sur Marne to head off rein- 
forcements for Conde, said to be approaching from the Neth- 
erlands ; but finding them still far away, he preferred to 
attack Conde in connection with his new coadjutor. He had 
constructed a bridge at Epinay, and it was agreed that La 
Ferte should cross and fall on the left flank of Conde's camp, 
while Turenne should remain on the right bank to prevent 
his repassing the river. Conde guessed the plan when he 
saw the building of the bridge ; and was compelled ere 
the two armies should be down upon him to seek refuge 
beyond Paris, for the fickle capital was now as fiercely 
opposed to him as it had been friendly, and would not allow 
him inside the walls. He chose Charenton, at the confluence 
of the Seine and Marne, as his retreat. From his camp at 
St. Cloud he could move thither along the left bank, or he 
could move through the suburbs of Paris on the right bank ; 
and the latter being an equally short route and with better 
roads, he chose it, — unwisely, as the event proved. Start- 
ing out early July 5, he had already traversed the Bois de 
Boulogne, the Faubourgs St. Honore, Montmartre, St. Denis 
and St. Martin, and the van had got beyond St. Antoine, 
when he perceived the head of the king's column approach- 
ing from the north. Turenne had ascertained his movement, 
and determined to attack him on the march, a fact which pre- 
vented Conde's reaching Charenton without a battle. It was 
manifest that, if he continued his march, his rear would be 
fallen upon ; and there was no probability that so able a sol- 
dier as Turenne would permit him to cross the Marne. He 
was trapped, but he did the only possible thing : he recalled 
Tavannes, who led the column, and who managed to rejoin 
his chief with some loss. 

Conde was indeed in ill case. In his front the kind's 
army, thrice his size, in his rear the walls of Paris, manned 



530 



CITY FIGHTING. 



by the militia, determined to bar his entry to the town, now 
his only refuge. His defeat seemed so certain that the walls 
were crowded by Parisians, then as now eager sight-seers ; 
while on the heights of Charonne stood the king and court 
to witness his inevitable destruction. Conde, as was always 
his mood, determined to sell his life and his cause dear. 
There were some intrenchments in his front which had been 
erected to arrest the duke of Lorraine should he attempt to 

levy blackmail on Paris, and 
these defenses he utilized. 
His position was good in hav- 
ing concentric roads in his rear 
which enabled him to sustain 
his fighting lines ; but he was 
in a bag ; Turenne well knew 
it, and drew his line around 
him from Charonne to the 
river. He then organized 
three attacks : himself in the 
centre, Marquis St. Maigrin 
on his right, and the duke of 
Noailles on his left. Conde 
opposed him with Nemours 
and Tavannes on right and left, holding himself with a small 
following ready to march to any point seriously endangered. 
Each French general knew the other : it was surely to be a 
death struggle. 

Desirous of making a certainty of the fight, and, as was 
his wont, seeking to save lives, Turenne began to skirmish, 
while waiting for La Ferte, but Mazarin ordered him instantly 
to close with the prince and destroy him. He could not tell 
what might occur within the walls of Paris. Turenne obeyed. 
Conde met the first assault on the centre by a sortie, and 




Battle of St. Antoine. 



PARIS ADMITS CONDE. 531 

repulsed it ; and shortly a sanguinary struggle was engaged in 
all along the line. St. Maigrin carried the works in the Rue 
de Charonne, and despite the fire from the housetops and 
windows, kept on his way. Conde met his battalions at the 
market-place and drove them back headlong, with a heavy 
loss in officers. In the king's centre progress was made only 
at yet more severe loss, for Conde had posted troops in every 
house and garden, and the fire was deadly. It was a hand to 
hand fight at almost all points. Meanwhile Noailles carried 
the intrenchments in his front, and was fast closing in on 
Nemours, when Conde appeared upon the scene and thrust 
him back. But despite all Conde could do, Turenne, at the 
head of the royal army, still forged on ; and though several 
times driven back, kept steadily gaining ground. He finally 
reached the abbey ; and thence worked his way along the 
Rue St. Antoine until Conde in person stopped him west of 
its walls. At this point the conflict was desperate. The men 
fought like devils. Turenne sent in Noailles anew, and forced 
the fighting everywhere, while La Ferte arrived and prepared 
to get in Concle's rear. Conde was being netted ; his -annihi- 
lation appeared certain ; when fortunately, by the intercession 
of Mile, de Montpensier, daughter of the duke of Orleans, 
the gates of Paris were opened to him and he was allowed to 
pass in, as to a temple of refuge. He retired into the Quartier 
St. Jaques. He had lost two thousand men ; Turenne prob- 
ably more. 

Conde did not long remain in Paris ; he had but four thou- 
sand men left, and could not undertake to face both Turenne 
and La Ferte. He turned to Spain, which had had an easy 
task since the court had drawn the forces from the frontiers, 
and had recaptured many fortresses. Even Dunkirk, won at 
such risk and cost, had fallen to them. The archduke saw 
that Conde would be an exceptionally valuable ally, and dis- 



532 - TURENNE ON THE DEFENSIVE. 

patched Fuensaldegna to his aid ; and the duke of Lorraine, 
who was again afoot, entered Champagne at the same time 
that Fuensaldegna entered Picardy. And though the Span- 
iard yielded no hearty assistance to Conde, on the other hand 
the duke of Lorraine remained with the prince some time. 

Alarmed at this new alliance, the court was for retiring to 
Burgundy and Lyon, but Turenne persuaded them that flight 
was the one thing to ruin the cause, and induced them to 
stay near the army and to move to Pontoise, behind the river 
Oise, north of Paris, where he assured them that he could 
afford them due protection. 

Learning of the approach of the duke of Lorraine, Turenne 
advanced to Compiegne, hoping to prevent his junction with 
the Spaniards. He failed in his efforts, but shortly the bulk 
of the Flanders contingent returned home, leaving but a 
small detachment of cavalry with the duke of Lorraine ; 
whereupon Turenne retired to near Paris to prevent Conde 
and Lorraine from joining hands. But this project likewise 
failed, owing to the interference of Mazarin ; Conde and Lor- 
raine met at Ablon, and as they considerably outnumbered 
Turenne, the latter was driven to resort to the defensive. He 
placed his army behind the forest of Villeneuve St. Georges, 
in the angle of the Seine and Yeres, from which place, by a 
coup de main, he ousted Lorraine. The allies were unwilling 
to attack him in this excellent position, but sought instead to 
cut off his convoys and to hold him to his camp. Conde 
posted his forces in four corps around the royal army and in 
close proximity to it, but was unable to cut Turenne from 
access to Corbeil, where lay his munitions, despite his numer- 
ous parties sent abroad to worry him and starve him out ; 
and though for the moment Turenne was almost in a state of 
blockade, he was never out of victual. But Conde fell sick 
and left the army ; and the duke of Lorraine had neither the 



THE KING REENTERS PARIS. 533 

ability nor the steadiness to carry out the plan Conde had 
inaugurated. Turenne managed safely to get all his convoys 
in, and on the fall of Montrond, which another royal army 
had been besieging, he received three thousand men as rein- 
forcements. 

The ill management of the campaign had disheartened the 
fickle Parisians as much as the eating out of the entire vicin- 
ity, and had predisposed them to any change. Turenne, who 
had exhausted his Corbeil magazines, now undertook a splen- 
did manoeuvre. By a night march on October 4-5, he made 
his way to Corbeil ; thence he started, in two columns so dis- 
posed that he could at short notice wheel left into line, for 
Tournan, and in three days crossed the Marne at Meaux and 
reached Senlis ; and thence to Pontoise, where lay the court. 
Conde, who had now been definitely abandoned by the Paris- 
ians, left the capital for Champagne, as the neighborhood of 
Paris could no longer sustain an army. While Conde and 
the duke of Lorraine retreated towards the Aisne, the king, 
via St. Germain and St. Cloud, reentered Paris, — a triumph 
for which he might thank the constancy and skill of Turenne, 
whose courage and steadfastness under the pressure of grave 
difficulties had been altogether beyond praise. 

In Champagne Conde took Chateau Porcien, Ehetel, Mou- 
zon and Ste. Menehould, and made a definite treaty with the 
Spaniards, by which in consideration of his serving as gener- 
alissimo of their armies, all joint conquests on French terri- 
tory should be his. He now had twenty-five thousand men 
under his orders ; success appeared about to smile upon him ; 
but the treaty was never carried out with any show of fair- 
ness. The means of securing any such conquests as had been 
contemplated were afforded him but for a short period, though 
he was able to take Bar le Due, Void, Commerci and many 
small places. These gains were in a sense losses ; they left 



534 IMPOVERISHED RESOURCES. 

him but a small relic of his own army, for his foot was all 
distributed in the captured places. 

Turenne and La Ferte, after quieting the centre of the 
kingdom, moved forward to the Lorraine frontier, and laid 
siege to Bar le Due. Conde came to its rescue, but his men 
became unmanageable at the capture of a small town through 
which they passed, and where was stored a good deal of wine, 
and he was driven off and returned to Clermont and thence 
to Stenay. The royal army took Bar le Due, Barrois, Cha- 
teau Porcien and Vervins. Turenne would now have been 
glad to bring Conde to battle, but the latter retired into 
Luxemburg. 

Ouly Conde and the duke of Orleans now held out ; the 
Fronde was practically at an end, a work clearly due to the 
patient skill of Turenne. 

At the opening of 1653 Conde held Rhetel, Ste. Mene- 
hould, Mouzon, Stenay and Clermont in Champagne ; in 
Burgundy, Bellegarde ; and he had seven to eight thousand 
men in Champagne, as many in Guienne, and numerous 
secret partisans all through France. The operations at the 
opening of the year were lax, for both the Spaniards and 
French were much weakened by the never-ending wars ; and 
the era of big armies had not yet come. It needed a new 
generation to grow up to furnish men. The existing genera- 
tion had been killed off. 

The French opened the campaign in Champagne, Bur- 
gundy and Guienne ; the Spaniards were late in coming into 
action, owing to impoverished resources. Turenne and La 
Ferte, who had ten thousand horse, seven thousand foot and 
a few guns, took Chateau Porcien, which had again fallen to 
the Spaniards, and Rhetel. Conde's possession of Mouzon, 
Stenay and Rhetel kept open an entrance into France, and 
the capture of the latter upset his plans. In July the arch- 



TURENNE'S SOUND ADVICE. 535 

t 

duke and he entered Picardy with nearly thirty thousand 
men, Spaniards, Germans, Italians, Lorrainers, Walloons and 
French refugees. Of this body eleven thousand were horse, 
and there were forty guns. They assembled at La Capelle, 
and pushed by a rapid march to Fonsonime ; whence Conde 
hoped by lively measures to reach Paris. But Fuensaldegna, 
jealous of Conde's success, was purposely slow; he wished 
to besiege Arras, because this town, if taken, would belong 
to Spain and not to Conde ; while Conde naturally desired to 
advance. The dispute consumed much time, and gave 
Turenne and La Ferte leisure to return from Rhetel, and 
to reach Ribemont via Vervins with twelve thousand men, 
accompanied by Mazarin and the king. Many opinions of 
what it was best to do were given, but Turenne had his way. 
" The danger is great," said he. " What we need is to con- 
centrate all our forces, march to meet the enemy, choose 
the best places for defense, hold head to his superior forces 
without fighting him, and wait until Conde divides his forces, 
— as he must do if he would march on Paris, — to attack 
the parts in detail." Accepting this very sound advice, the 
court retired to Compiegne. 

The French passed the Oise, and with care approached the 
Spaniards under Conde, who had also crossed and advanced 
with the Somme on their right and the Oise on their left. 
Along Conde's route all the undefended towns opened their 
gates, but he put in no garrisons, contenting himself with 
taking an oath of fealty, for fear of depleting his forces. 
This was his last chance, and he would take no risk. Rations 
and money he got in plenty ; and by way of Ham he advanced 
on Roie, and took it in two days. Here Fuensaldegna refused 
to go further. Turenne moved to Guiscard, a wooded coun- 
try, good for defense, and sat down to watch Conde. The 
latter proposed to turn on La Fere, but Fuensaldegna was 



536 



CONDE' S ACTIVITY, 



slow, and Turenne, guessing his intention, reached it first and 
garrisoned it. Failing at La Fere, Conde suggested Peronne 
or Corbie as a good objective, but Fuensaldegna would accept 
neither suggestion ; he kept his eye on Arras as the preferable 
scheme, and Turenne, moreover, forestalled Conde by throw- 
ing a garrison into both places. Hearing, at this time, that a 



''%. \'^%>t^_ ^AMSHAV ittfcJESNOi-/ 




Campaign on the Somme. 



large convoy was on the way from Cambray to the Spaniards,, 
and crossing the Somme at Ham, Turenne marched by 
Peronne to Bapaume, and drove the convoy into Corbie for 
his own use. Thus met at all points Conde determined on 
fighting, as he had superior forces ; but how should he bring 
Turenne to battle ? He put all his skill to work. As says 
his biographer Desormeaux : " At one time he approached 
him threatening attack with his whole force, at another he 
moved away precipitately to entice him to decamp so that he 
might take him unawares on the march ; again he offered him 



CONDE AND TURENNE MANOEUVRE. 537 

the bait of a signal advantage which was but a trap in real- 
ity ; and again he moved on the principal towns of Picardy, 
as if to undertake their capture. But in vain did he display 
all the resources of the art, — suspicion, circumspection and 
wisdom guided all the steps of Turenne. It was Fabius 
against Hannibal." And despite his superiority of force, 
Conde did not dare to advance on Paris with Turenne in 
his rear. 

The French had gone into camp at Mont St. Quentin north 
of and covering Peronne ; the Somme between the enemy and 
Turenne seemed to protect him, and neither marshal sought a 
cover behind intrenchments. Conde, by a circuit and a secret 
march, crossed the Somme and a brook which flowed in front 
of the royal camp, deceived La Ferte, and appeared suddenly 
on Turenne's right flank. At once catching alarm, the latter 
cleverly withdrew by his left ; Conde followed with the cav- 
alry ready for action. Turenne took up a new and very 
strong position a couple of miles to the east on a wooded 
plain near Buire, and began to intrench. Conde followed, 
occupied an adjoining position, and made preparations to 
attack ; but the Spanish foot was late in coming up, and the 
favorable moment passed ; Turenne's works grew too strong 
to make an assault advisable. The Spanish forces remained 
three days in front of Turenne, seeking by skirmishing and 
feints to draw him out ; but Turenne's role was a defensive 
one, and Conde could accomplish nothing. 

The prince then sought to invest Guise ; but the Lorrainers 
would not cooperate. Turenne threw two thousand men into 
the place, and the Spaniards remained in camp at Vermand. 
Hither came Archduke Leopold, but his presence added little 
to the military scheme and internal troubles were increased. 
The treaty he had made with the Spaniards gave Conde the 
rank of generalissimo and was supposed to invest him with the 



538 cond£ again at rocroy. 

supreme command, but to this power the arehduke and Fuen- 
saldegna sought to put a limit ; they effected their purposes 
by inciting the several corps commanders against him ; and 
there being a number of separate bodies composing the Span- 
ish army, only absolute obedience to one head could keep it 
efficient. With the smallest opposition, no satisfactory mili- 
tary progress could be made; and there were never-ending 
quarrels. Conde returned to near St. Quentin ; Turenne 
changed his position to Golancourt near Ham. He could 
not be reached, and was yet a never-ceasing threat. 

Having failed to accomplish aught in Picardy against 
Turenne, Conde changed the theatre of war to Champagne, 
and resolved to besiege Rocroy. The archduke finally 
yielded him the command. To accomplish his end, Conde 
must deceive Turenne. He dispatched several small bodies 
to Bapaume, Dourlens, Hesdin and Montreuil, and while 
Turenne was speeding detachments to head off these threat- 
ened attacks, Conde moved rapidly to Rocroy and invested it. 
But he had more difficulty in taking it than he formerly 
had had in beating the Spanish army under its walls. The 
valorous defense of the garrison ; continual rains ; the jeal- 
ousy of Fuensaldegna ; the defection of the duke of Lorraine, 
who left in the. middle of the siege with all his troops, and 
many other minor difficulties told against him. Turenne 
made no effort to disturb the siege, for Conde had too 
strongly held all the denies which approach the plain in 
which Rocroy is situated. He preferred instead to take 
Mouzon. After a siege of twenty-five days Conde captured 
Rocroy, and from here he made raids all through the coun- 
try, and even to the vicinity of Paris. 

A new royal army now besieged Ste. Menehould, and 
Turenne and La Ferte covered the work. Conde endeavored 
to raise the siege, but uselessly ; he was tied hand and foot 



WHICH WAS THE GREATER? 



539 



by his allies. Thus the campaign ended with Turenne's com- 
plete success, though he had but half his opponent's forces. 
Conde's cause was falling into ruin. 

This campaign has been much praised by military critics, 
but it is chiefly of interest to show the difference between 
Conde and Turenne. By many Conde has been called the 
greater man ; but despite his exceptional boldness and skill 
in battle, his restless energy, his high military capacity and 
his many splendid successes, he did not have the power to 
work against fortune which Turenne so constantly exhibited. 
No doubt Conde was hampered by his allies ; but so, in 
nearly all his campaigns, was Turenne by his superiors ; and 
yet he rose above them and accomplished results on the 
whole greater than any of Conde. 




Portable Gun. (15th Century.) 



XLIII. 

ARRAS AND VALENCIENNES. 1654-1656. 

As 1654 opened, while the French hesieged Stenay, the allies hegan the siege 
of Arras. The French covering army had been surprised by Condd, and the 
garrison was small. The allied works were strong, and stretched in a circle of 
fifteen miles. There were two lines, with ditch and wall and wolf -pits. Tu- 
renne came to the relief of Arras while Conde* and Fuensaldegna were opening 
the trenches, and by clever positions cut the allies off from nearly all their 
supplies. Stenay was taken and its force sent to Turenne, who finally deter- 
mined on assaulting the Spanish lines. This was done August 24, and despite 
heroic fighting by Conde', proved completely successful. The Spanish army was 
almost broken up, and Arras was relieved. In 1655 there was some handsome 
manoeuvring, but to no great effect. In 1656 the French sat down before 
Valenciennes, a very strong city on the Scheldt, Turenne and La Ferte" occu- 
pying the right and left banks respectively. Don John of Austria and Conde" 
came to its relief, made works opposite Turenne, and inundated the country to 
distress the French. Building bridges over the Scheldt, Conde" on July 16, at 
night, assaulted La Ferte°s works and completely defeated him. Turenne was 
forced from the siege. Valenciennes was a good offset for Arras. 

The 1654 campaign opened with the besieging of Stenay 
— sole relic of Conde's immense possessions — by the French 
army under Marshal La Ferte. Turenne with fifteen thou- 
sand men was in Champagne, covering the siege and watching 
the frontier. The allied army of Conde and the archduke, 
thirty thousand strong, moved from the Netherlands and sat 
down to besiege Arras. To cover this fortress General de 
Bar had been lying near by with a flying column ; but he was 
negligent ; Conde with ten thousand cavalry cleverly inter- 
posed between him and the town, and was so speedily fol- 
lowed by six thousand Lorrainers that he was able to invest 



INTERFERENCE OF FUENSALDEGNA. 541 

it; while next day the archduke and Count Fuensaldegna 
arrived with fourteen thousand Spaniards, Italians and Wal- 
loons and completed the work. 

Arras was one of the ramparts of France, but de Bar's 
failure to throw himself into the town on the appearance of 
Conde's column left the garrison under Montdejeu far too 
weak. Conde began lines of circumvallation in a circuit of 
eighteen miles. These consisted of a ditch twelve feet wide 
and a wall ten feet high, added to which, on the low land, was 
an outer ditch nine feet wide and ten deep ; and along the 
whole of the line were erected redoubts every hundred paces, 
amply armed with guns. Between the double lines were 
twelve checker-wise rows of wolf-pits for defense against cav- 
alry ; and a line of contravallation was erected over much of 
the distance to hold head against sorties. In ten days, with 
the labor of the whole army and twelve thousand countrymen 
impressed into service, the work was completed. Though the 
garrison was small, the French were enterprising, and in 
three successive attempts they broke through the lines before 
they were complete, and threw six hundred horse into the 
town, losing, however, an equal number in the venture. 

Fuensaldegna was still at odds with Conde. This feature 
is so constantly dwelt on by his biographers as an explana- 
tion of Conde's failure to accomplish what he set out to do, 
that it reads like a stereotyped excuse. That there was fric- 
tion cannot be doubted, but Conde would have seemed greater 
had he been able to surmount this difficulty. It is success in 
the face of obstacles which peculiarly appeals to us ; and 
surely Gustavus had more obstinacy among his allies to con- 
tend with than Conde ever dreamed of. Too much insist- 
ence on the interference of superiors or colleagues does not 
tend to raise the reputation of a general. 

Conde knew Arras well, and advised two approaches, so as 



542 



TURENNE AT ARRAS. 



to divide the enemy's efforts ; Fuensaldegna chose an appar- 
ently easy but really difficult place for one approach, and 
insisted on so opening it ; and as a result, at the end of a 
month he had made no progress worth mention. 

The danger to Arras in- 
duced Mazarin in July to 
order Turenne and La Ferte 
from the Meuse to its relief. 
Conde, learning of their 
march, proposed to go out 
and give the enemy battle ; 
but Fuensaldegna would not 
budge, and on July 19 Tu- 
renne put in an appearance 
on the east of the place and 
seized Mouchi-le-Preux, cut- 
ting the Spaniards off from 
Douay, Bouchain and Valen- 
ciennes ; and by cleverly dis- 
posing his parties, — sending 
a suitable detachment to Ba- 
paume, one to Lens and one 
to Peronne, — was able to 
intercept their convoys from 
Cambray, Lille, Aire and St. 
Omer. He set up his camp 
between the Scarpe and the 
Cogeul, on ground high and 
dry, and threw his works along his front from one river to 
the other. St. Pol alone was left to the allies: they were 
thus all but besieged in their own lines, and could get 
no victual ■ except what was brought in by horsemen and 
packs. Shortly Stenay was captured, and under Hocquin- 




Arras. 



AN ATTACK PLANNED. 543 

court its besiegers moved to join Turenne, who with fifteen 
squadrons went out to meet him at Bapaume, took St. Pol 
and Mont St. Eloi on the way, and on his return placed him 
on the opposite side of the town, on a hill known as Caesar's 
camp. This absence of Turenne was the proper occasion for 
an attack on the French, which Conde was eager to make ; 
but Fuensaldegna was self-opinionated, and apparently pos- 
sessed the power of enforcing his views. 

The besiegers began to lack victual ; they were at one time 
all but starved out, and had it not been for a cleverly con- 
ducted convoy of provisions from Douay, they would have 
been driven from the siege. For two weeks longer — the 
Spaniards had been seven weeks on the spot — the two armies 
lay in presence, exchanging only artillery fire. Turenne had 
reconnoitred carefully on two separate occasions. Where 
Conde had taken position, on the south of the town, he 
found it impracticable to attack, but he thought the line 
could be broken elsewhere. His lieutenants were not of his 
opinion ; in fact, he was the only one of the French who 
saw any chance of success in the offensive. But Turenne 
was determined to relieve Arras, for Montdejeu was getting 
out of powder, as he managed to let Turenne know; and 
it was finally agreed that each French marshal, at the head 
of his own corps, should fall on the quarters of Don Ferdi- 
nando de Solis on the northwest side, and on that part of 
Fuensaldegna's quarters on the north nearest to Solis, these 
being the furthest from the quarters of Conde and apparently 
the weakest part of the line ; and that to create a diversion 
there should be made three false attacks, one on Conde, one on 
the Lorrainers, and one opposite the archduke. The attack 
was set for the night of August 24-25, the eve of St. Louis. 

' At sunset Turenne and La Ferte broke up, and so soon as 
it was dark crossed the Scarpe on four bridges prepared 



544 A FINE ASSAULT. 

beforehand, leaving only the sick and non-combatants in 
camp. Arrived at the rendezvous given to Hocquincourt, 
they found him delayed by more than two hours, an unpar- 
donable blunder, as he was close to the place of attack. The 
moon shortly became obscured, and the southeast wind 
blew towards the assaulting party. Under such favorable 
conditions Turenne deemed it wise not to wait for Hocquin- 
court. The columns of Turenne and La Ferte were each 
preceded by five battalions in line, to cover as wide a space 
as possible, and these were headed by pioneers with fascines,- 
hurdles, ladders, picks and shovels. La Ferte was on Tu- 
renne's left ; Hocquincourt was to have formed on his right. 
There were twenty-six thousand men in line ; the enemy still 
had more by two thousand. 

Turenne reached the foot of the enemy's works at 2 
o'clock without discovery ; so soon as his matches were seen 
by the enemy, he at once threw forward his men ; and with- 
out much loss pushed his way across the first and second 
ditches. The enemy's fire was wild; the password, "Vive 
le Roi et Turenne ! " always fired the French heart, and the 
assault was given home. The Italian foot was driven in, and 
Montdejeu from within Arras made a sortie to aid the attack, 
of which he quickly got notice. 

La Ferte was not equally successful opposite Count Fuen- 
saldegna, but Turenne 's success enabled him finally to push 
forward ; and when Hocquincourt at length arrived and drove 
in the Lorrainers, the defeat of the Spaniards was complete ; 
the French held half their works, and could communicate 
with the garrison of Arras. Not until five o'clock, it is 
alleged, did Conde learn of the disaster. The false attack 
which was to have been made on his lines was for some reason 
not delivered. Why the sound of the exceptional firing did 
not arrest his notice is not stated. It must have been a 



COMPLETE SUCCESS. 545 

strong wind to blow it from him. Conde at once flew to 
arms, headed some of his cavalry, crossed the Scarpe by way 
of the archduke's quarters, and fell furiously on a part of La 
Ferte's troops that had dispersed for plunder, and on his 
line which had come down into the low land, and threw them 
into disorder ; and had not Turenne gathered his own forces 
and La Ferte's artillery, taken post on the hill La Ferte had 
abandoned, and met Conde's stout assault in person, the result 
might even at this late hour have been changed ; for Conde 
always charged like a whirlwind. Finding himself opposed 
by Turenne, and being moreover taken in rear by Montdejeu 
from Arras and by Hocquincourt on the flank, after a two 
hours' gallant fight Conde was forced to retire, which he did 
towards Cambray with the wreck of the army. The arch- 
duke fled to Douay, where Fuensaldegna joined him. It was 
Conde who saved what remained of the Spanish forces. 

The Spaniards lost but three thousand men killed and 
wounded, but they left all their sixty-three guns on the spot ; 
two thousand train wagons, nine thousand horses and great 
booty fell to the French. 

This was a brilliant operation of Turenne's, full of able 
combinations, and added greatly to his repute. Louis XIV., 
who with the court was at Peronne, visited Arras and con- 
ferred on him command of all the French forces here. Tu- 
renne crossed the Scheldt, intending to march on Brussels. 
He actually did cross the border, but Conde gathered forty 
squadrons and the militia of the country, and though weak in 
numbers, with that restless activity which was so marked a 
characteristic when roused to action, manoeuvred athwart his 
path ; and Turenne, aware that there were many divisions to 
back Conde up in case the French advanced too far, retired to 
Maubeuge and then into winter-quarters in December. The 
operations at Arras deserve close study. 



546 



CLEVER MANCEUVRES. 



In 1655 both armies were equally strong, some twenty-five 
thousand men each. The French stood at Guise and Laon, 
the Spaniards not far from Landrecies, where Conde was in 
command, and at Mons, where the archduke lay. Turenne 
besieged and successively captured Landrecies and La Ca- 
pelle. While he lay at Landrecies, Conde advised a diver- 
sion on La Fere, where the French court was at the moment 
resident, thinking to lure Turenne from his work ; but Fuen- 
saldegna would not undertake the operation, and Conde con- 
tented himself with heading sundry raids into Picardy. The 
siege of Landrecies lasted a month ; Conde could not inter- 
rupt it, for Turenne had 
provisioned for a long siege, 
and to cut his convoys was 
of no avail. 

Turenne, joined by the 
king, then advanced down 
the Sambre as far as Thuin ; 
Conde and the Spaniards 
retired beyond the Scheldt 
and Sambre, and erected an 
intrenched defensive posi- 
tion behind the Haine in a country so inundated that an 
approach to it was impracticable. The lines, strongly gar- 
risoned, extended from Conde to St. Ghislain. The king 
thought it would redound to the honor of the French arms to 
force them ; but Turenne showed how he could turn this 
position by a flank manoeuvre and by twice crossing the 
Scheldt, once above Valenciennes, and again below the for- 
tress of Conde ; and his plan was adopted. The French 
crossed the Sambre, and via Bavay marched towards Bou- 
chain. Masking this fortress, Turenne crossed the Scheldt 
at Neuville, and the enemy, who had retired to Valenciennes, 




Operation on the Scheldt. 



FRIENDS BECOME FOES. 547 

likewise crossed and established themselves with their left 
leaning on St. Amand. Arrived opposite them, Turenne 
sent Castelnau to fall on their right flank, while he attacked 
them in front. The enemy retired towards the fortress of 
Conde, and though Turenne ordered Castelnau to fall on their 
rear so as to hold them until he could come up, this was so 
weakly done that they escaped. Turenne's presence forced 
Conde and the Spaniards to retire toward Tournay, nullified 
any value their defensive line might have had, and enabled 
the French to lay siege to Conde. 

Up to this moment Conde and Turenne, though on oppo- 
site sides, had been firm friends. But at this time Conde inter- 
cepted a dispatch of Turenne's in which the latter referred to 
his late retreat as a flight, in a manner which Conde could 
not forgive ; and for a time the warring friends were foes 
in earnest. 

In the last half of August Turenne captured the fortresses 
of Conde and St. Ghislain, and the enemy continued his 
retreat, though Conde undertook some smaller operations, and 
conducted them handsomely with his body of six thousand 
cavalry. The archduke, afraid of the French advance, 
strengthened the fortresses, by so much weakening his army, 
and did practically nothing. Late in the year, in November, 
both armies sought winter-quarters. 

Next year, 1656, Don John of Austria replaced Arch- 
duke Leopold in command of the imperial forces ; Conde was 
second to him, and could not operate on his own judgment. 
Don John, who brought the manners and ideas of the court 
to the conduct of the army, did nothing but move to and fro, 
and besiege small forts on the line between Tournay, Valen- 
ciennes, Quesnoy, Lens, Bethune and St. Quentin in southern 
Flanders, and on the northern boundary of Artois and Pi- 
cardy. In resisting this ill-considered species of aggression, 



548 AT VALENCIENNES. 

Turenne exhibited remarkable powers of manoeuvring. Both 
parties aimed for Tournay ; but Conde threw a body of four 
thousand men under the works, and anticipating the French 
in a surprise of the place, held on until the Spanish army 
could come up and invest it. Though tied by the inertness 
of the Spanish generals, Conde, on this and other occasions 
this year, must be said to have operated with ability. 

At the beginning of summer, on June 14 and 15, Turenne 
opened trenches in front of Valenciennes, building lines of 
circumvallation on both sides of the Scheldt, he occupying the 
right bank, La Ferte, who came up later, the left. Turenne 
had sixteen thousand men, half cavalry, La Ferte a less 
number. Valenciennes was a strong and rich city on the 
Scheldt, which with its affluents flowed through and around 
it, and made the country a network of marshes up and down 
river. From Valenciennes to the town of Conde is a vast 
plain ; but on the west the town and river are dominated by 
a hill, Mont Azin. Turenne occupied the plain on the east 
of the town, the army of La Ferte the west, including Mont 
Azin, and over the Scheldt were a bridge above and another 
below, by which the two armies could intercommunicate. 
Turenne's plans were well laid ; there were but two thousand 
men in the garrison, though some ten thousand citizens were 
drilled, and the capture of Valenciennes seemed but a ques- 
tion of time. 

Don John had not yet got his forces in hand ; but Conde 
had a flying corps, and his first scheme was to open the reser- 
voir sluices of Bouchain to throw the waters of the river 
down upon the French. The inundation increased the width 
of the river to one thousand paces, and kept the French gen- 
erals busy diverting the floods by canals and embankments. 
Finally they succeeded in throwing the inundation back from 
their camps and into the city, flooding one of its quarters. 



ABLE DIVERSIONS. 



549 



Don John and Conde, with twenty thousand men, now moved 
from Douay towards Valenciennes, and, establishing their 
main camp on the south of the city opposite the left of 
Turenne's lines at half cannon-shot distance, with their own 
left on the Scheldt and the right on the Rouelle, they occu- 
pied both banks of the river, and threw several bridges across. 
The bulk of the force lay where it threatened Turenne, and 
this general believed that the attack would be made, if at all, 




Valenciennes. 

on him. Conde, for a week or more, made nightly attacks on 
Turenne or La Ferte, always at new points, and after so 
lively a fashion that the French troops were kept under arms 
until they were almost tired out. Then, for the night of 
July 9-10, he prepared an attack oh La Ferte. Marshal 
Marsin from St. Amand was to hold Turenne in check by 
demonstrating with his six thousand men, while Conde and 
Don John should fall on his colleague. Notice was contrived 
to be got to the garrison to increase its fire and to open the 



550 CONDfi ASSAULTS. 

sluices, so as, if possible, to make the French bridges unavail- 
able for mutual succor. Conde remembered Turenne's bril- 
liant operation at Arras and proposed to have his revenge. 

The garrison had been much reduced, and had Turenne 
assaulted before this moment, the town must have fallen. It 
was time that the Spaniards should act, if at all. From the 
preparations of the allies Turenne divined that La Ferte 
would be attacked, and offered him half his army ; but La 
Ferte, who was absurdly jealous of his colleague, rejected the 
offer. Before his arrival, Turenne had built strong defenses 
to his camp, but La Ferte had demolished half of them, 
as being quite unnecessary. Conde and Don John mean- 
while assembled their men on the evening of the 16th of 
July, moved across the river, and reaching the ditch of La 
Ferte's works before they were discovered, delivered an 
assardt so suddenly as to be completely successful. Though 
La Ferte gathered the cavalry and defended his ground man- 
fully, Conde drove him in, and of the six regiments which 
Turenne sent over to La Ferte's assistance, two met the 
same fate. The inundation and short shrift prevented 
Turenne from aiding him with more men, though he made a 
stout effort to do so. While the Spanish foot made its way 
into Valenciennes, Conde and the horse attacked the flying 
French, drove them into the flooded river or cut them down, 
and of all La Ferte's forces only two thousand escaped the 
sword, drowning or capture, the Spanish loss being a bare 
hundred. The fight lasted an hour only. Marsin had 
meanwhile attacked Turenne, but was repulsed. Thus rudely 
interrupted, Turenne abandoned the siege and hastily retired 
to Quesnoy, where, with the sixteen thousand men and six 
guns left him, he took up a stand to meet Conde, who, he 
believed, would follow and urge battle. But Don John would 
not leave Valenciennes for immediate pursuit, and when he 



A MASTERLY RETREAT. 551 

finally followed, Turenne was ready for an attack. He 
feared that to retire too far would alarm the court and unduly 
encourage the enemy ; and, against the advice of all his offi- 
cers, prepared for battle. Nothing but his own courage kept 
his men in hand ; and, seeing his firm front, the Spanish 
army declined to attack, and retired to Conde. 

The whole operation at Valenciennes was an able piece of 
work by Conde, and though it apparently succeeded because 
Turenne had not been as careful as he might in his outpost 
service, and did not soon enough receive notice of the enemy's 
manoeuvre, it was none the less a fair match for Turenne's 
success at Arras. The fault mainly lay with La Ferte, who 
was unwilling to heed any suggestions of his colleague. 

Turenne was by no means disheartened. He lost none of 
his activity, and constantly annoyed the enemy to sustain the 
morale of his troops. Turenne's elasticity under defeat is 
one of his highest qualities. Apparently unwilling to push 
Turenne further, the enemy now besieged the town of Conde, 
as if for lack of a better objective ; captured it, and moved 
successively on Cambray, Lens and Bethune. Constantly 
hovering around them, seeking an advantage, Turenne fol- 
lowed their movements, and held himself ready for battle 
at any auspicious moment. It is a subject of regret that 
so little space can be given to operations which are alto- 
gether admirable. Finally Conde and Don John retired to 
Maubeuge. Turenne went into winter-quarters behind the 
Somme. 

When they are the only ones in the field, the operations of 
smaller bodies are as interesting and may be quite as skillful 
as those of the larger ones ; when they are mere detach- 
ments from the main army, contributing to and following its 
manoeuvres, they do not command the same attention, how- 
ever worthy of study. But though an enormous army com- 



552 SMALL VERSUS LARGE ARMIES. 

pels a certain admiration which is inseparable from mere 
bulk (whether indeed in art, architecture, engineering or 
even literature), a general does not necessarily earn praise 
for ably commanding it beyond what we bestow on the leader 
of the smaller army. We admire Napoleon's 1796 campaign 
more than that of 1812 ; nor can it be said that Grant's 
Wilderness campaign was as able as that of Jackson in the 
Valley. While Turenne led smaller armies than Eugene or 
Marlborough, they were none the less the armies which 
enacted the principal roles in the wars in which he was 
engaged, and deserve as ample recognition as if he had stood 
at the head of thrice the force. He later showed his capacity 
to handle large armies with equal ease. 



Knight. 
(15th Century.) 



XLIV. 

DUNKIRK. THE BATTLE OF THE DUNES, 1657. MAY 
AND JUNE, 1658. 

Louis had agreed with Cromwell to capture Dunkirk, which had again fallen 
to the Spaniards, and turn it over to the English, against a contingent of six 
thousand men. In 1657 the campaign consisted solely of manoeuvres between 
the coast and the Scheldt ; but in 1658, after there had been a number of seri- 
ous desertions from the French to Conde\ and the affairs of the king seemed des- 
perate, Turenne undertook to retrieve them by the capture of Dunkirk, under 
peculiarly harassing conditions, which almost promised failure. The time of 
year was bad, the difficulties greater than when Cond^ had taken it, and the 
threat of a relieving army certain. The English fleet, however, assisted Turenne, 
and later the English contingent. Finally, after the trenches were opened, Don 
John and Cond^ appeared at Furnes, and, leaving six thousand men at the siege, 
Turenne went out to meet them. On June 14 was fought the battle of the 
Dunes ; the English ships assisted with their fire ; the Spaniards had brought 
no artillery ; the ground was ill-adapted to horse ; and after a stout conflict 
Turenne won the day, and drove back the enemy, who retreated to his for- 
tresses. Dunkirk shortly surrendered. After some minor operations the cam- 
paign ended, and next year came the Peace of the Pyrenees. 

Louis XIV. had made a treaty offensive and defensive 
with Cromwell, by which England was to furnish six thou- 
sand men to France, and Louis agreed to capture Dunkirk 
and deliver it to the English. In consequence of this treaty, 
Charles II. and his brother, the duke of York, who so far 
had been depending on the countenance of the French court, 
left for the Netherlands, where the dukes of York and 
Gloucester thereafter commanded a small Irish contingent in 
the Spanish army. In May, 1657, Turenne concentrated at 
Amiens, intending to march to the seaboard in pursuance of 



554 A LUCKY ERROR. 

the projected capture of Dunkirk. But the late arrival both 
of his new recruits and of the English contingent prevented 
his accomplishing any result. The Spaniards concentrated 
in Flanders, and Turenne conceived a new plan which the 
court approved. La Ferte with fifteen thousand men was 
sent to the border to hold Conde in Luxemburg, where he had 
been wont to winter, while Turenne himself, with twenty-five 
thousand men, proposed to march to the river Lys, as if 
bound for the coast, whence he would sharply turn on Cam- 
bray, whose garrison was reduced by detachments ; and dur- 
ing this operation he would rely on the English, who were 
soon to land on the seaboard, and on the activity of La Ferte, 
to divert from his purpose the attention of the enemy. This 
plan Turenne inaugurated by a rapid march toward the Lys, 
which led Don John to fear for the coast fortresses and cease 
to watch Cambray ; on perceiving which, Turenne broke up 
with all his horse, and by a rapid day and night march 
reached Cambray May 29, and blockaded it. The infantry 
followed close behind. Turenne crossed the Scheldt near the 
town, and stood across the road to Bouchain ; threw bridges, 
and hurried forward his works so vigorously that in two days 
the blockade was complete. 

The Spaniards had already begged Conde to leave Luxem- 
burg to care for itself and come to the protection of the 
Netherlands, and La Ferte having failed to keep him busy, he 
had got to Mons, from whence, with three thousand horse, 
by rapid marching he reached Valenciennes May 29, the day 
on which Turenne blockaded Cambray. From Valenciennes 
Conde's guide happened to mislead him, and gave his column 
a wrong direction from which he emerged on the main road, 
while Turenne had made preparations to meet him on a road 
through a densely wooded country, which in fact Conde had 
intended to take. Thus by mere accident Conde went around 



TURENNE ON THE DEFENSIVE. 555 

Turenne ; and having, from Valenciennes, succeeded in notify- 
ing the commander of the Cambray garrison of his purpose, 
while Turenne's lines were disgarnished by his absence, he 
contrived, under cover of a smart night attack on the French 
cavalry, and at a loss of thirty officers and three or four hun- 
dred men, to enter Cambray. This was a very handsome 
operation, in which Conde's energy was deservedly aided by 
his luck. 

As the rest of Conde's army was near at hand, Turenne 
retired from Cambray, marched up the right bank of the 
Scheldt, and moved on Le Catelet and St. Quentin. With 
the St. Quentin garrison of four thousand men he reinforced 
La Ferte, who had been sent to besiege Montmedy, the key 
of Luxemburg, in the hope that the vigorous prosecution of 
the siege there would attract the attention of the enemy and 
lead him to separate his forces, or to commit some error of 
which he could take advantage. After a heroic resistance of 
six weeks, Montmedy succumbed, and La Ferte turned over 
his forces to Turenne. The latter was now joined by the six 
thousand English who had landed on the coast, but this fact 
drew the attention of the enemy to operations there ; and 
with every means of assuming the offensive, Turenne, as he 
says, felt constrained, while in the midst of so many strong 
fortresses and in the presence of so strong an enemy, to act 
on the defensive. If he undertook a siege of any of them, 
he feared that the enemy would make a raid into the interior, 
or snatch from him some one of his own ill-garrisoned cities. 
The situation required a defensive attitude ; by waiting he 
might gain an opportunity of taking the enemy at a disadvan- 
tage ; and he sat down in the region between the Scheldt 
and Sambre. 

No captain is always at his best. When we see him con- 
duct a splendid campaign one year, we are naturally led to 



556 PURPOSELESS MARCHING. 

expect equal originality, boldness and skill in the succeeding 
year. But history shows us no man who is uniformly on the 
same level ; and this was peculiarly the case in this era, when 
soldiers were under the restraint of a certain formality in the 
military art. In the game of war there constantly occur, 
moreover, situations which appear to paralyze the action of 
the rival leaders ; situations where, as at a game of chess, 
one moves in the dark, or tentatively, or in such a manner as 
to invite a move from the opponent. To sit down and wait 
for the next operation of your opponent is a very common 
occurrence in every campaign. Not to do so is the province 
of few men. 

Don John had manoeuvred meanwhile between the Meuse 
and Sambre, but finding no opportunity for action, he 
marched on Calais, which Conde had suggested a plan to 
seize out of hand by an attack at low tide from the sea front. 
As matters turned out, he found himself too late by a couple 
of hours ; and seeing that he could not seize the place, Don 
John returned to the Meuse, thinking to relieve Montmedy. 
Arriving after its fall, he continued to march to and fro with- 
out any apparent aim, fatiguing his army and gaining not 
the least result. Purposeless marching is not activity ; this 
word presupposes a clear objective or a well-conceived plan. 
Finally, having gathered reinforcements at Luxemburg, it 
looked as if Don John was preparing to invade France; 
Conde indeed suggested a raid on Paris. To give the Span- 
iards something else to think of, Turenne, by a march of 
seventy-five miles in three days, reached the Lys and block- 
aded the fortress of St. Venant. Whatever Don John's in- 
tentions, he now advanced to the rescue, but sat down to besiege 
Ardres instead of relieving St. Venant. After much diffi- 
culty, and the loss of several of his convoys, Turenne took St. 
Venant, and then sent five thousand cavalry to the assistance 



LOUIS IN BAD LUCK. 557 

of Ardres. Don John, who could easily have taken the 
place by assault, gave up the siege and, sharply pushed by 
the French, retired on Gravelines and Dunkirk. Turenne 
followed, took Mardyk under his nose, and put an English 
garrison into it. This ended the year's manoeuvres, and the 
rival armies went into winter-quarters. Though the opera- 
tions had been small, Turenne had fitted his work to his con- 
ditions and to his opponents as well. Conde had as usual 
been controlled by the Spanish generals, who well knew, by 
petty opposition and by subterfuge and half-hearted work, 
how to nullify his best efforts. His power, moreover, lay 
more in his coup d'ceil and fervor on the battle-field than in 
manoeuvring in the open field, or in stemming a disastrous 
tide which in any campaign might set against him. 

Matters turned against Louis XIV. during the winter of 
1657-58, and as a result Turenne got placed in a most diffi- 
cult situation. Hocquincourt, with the garrison of Hesdin, 
went over to Conde ; several fortresses surrendered ; Marshal 
d'Aumont, in an attempt to surprise Ostende, was captured ; 
Normandy rose in revolt ; the long-continued weakness of 
the government brought about, in all classes of the people 
as well as in the army, a marked spirit of dissatisfaction ; the 
number of troops was small ; Cromwell was impatient to get 
Dunkirk, and threatened to withdraw his troops and fleet, 
unless this place was speedily captured. Everything con- 
spired to give an ill turn to the situation. 

But Dunkirk presented singular difficulties. The Span- 
iards had broken the dikes and flooded the whole vicinity to 
Bergen. The fortress itself lay in the midst of three others, 
Gravelines, Bergen and Furnes, all in the hands of the Span- 
iards. This made the victualing and the delivery of material 
to an army besieging Dunkirk a task almost beyond execu- 
tion. France had no one to look to but Turenne, and he was 



558 ADVANCE ON DUNKIRK. 

at the head of a woefully small army. What could he do ? 
He had no one but himself to rely on. But the man grew 
as the horizon blackened : he resolved to have Dunkirk ; and 
by undertaking the almost impossible, he showed himself to 
be truly great. 

He concentrated part of his army near Amiens in April, 
and marched with eight thousand men to St. Yenant on the 
upper Lys, while three thousand men accompanied the no- 
madic court to Calais. On the way to Dunkirk, he sent out 
a detachment which took Cassel ; repaired, as he advanced, 
the roads, which were almost bottomless, with boards, fas- 
cines and stones ; turned Bergen by the right, and in early 
May, having learned that the garrison of the place was weak, 
and that the forts on the Bergen canal, which if in good con- 
dition might arrest his advance, had not been completed, he 
determined to push on Dunkirk, between this place and 
Furnes, over the flooded district. East of Dunkirk was a 
redoubt built on the only practicable road, but this had not 
been suitably garrisoned and was readily taken. 

It was a desperate undertaking to advance over a country 
where the floods grew deeper every day, but Turenne happily 
found a dike available, which led up to the two forts between 
Dunkirk and Bergen. To utilize the dike the forts must be 
first captured, and Turenne, who had been fortunate enough 
to receive six thousand fresh men, moved against them. The 
enemy sent a detachment from Dunkirk to their aid; but 
Turenne drove this back, reduced the redoubts, which had not 
been kept up in proper shape for defense, and utilized them 
himself. 

It was too early in the year to expect to succeed in crossing 
the flooded region with all his material of war ; and yet Tu- 
renne looked not back. He debated whether he had not best 
first besiege Bergen, which would be easier to capture than 



SEVERE LABORS. 



559 



Dunkirk ; but lie saw that if for a moment lie turned from 
his declared intention of besieging Dunkirk, lie would lose 
the moral control of his army and of the situation. It was 
Dunkirk alone, not Bergen, which would satisfy Cromwell 
and conserve the English alliance. Only Turenne's wonder- 
ful personal enthusiasm and the devotion of his troops ena- 
bled him to get so far as to undertake the siege. Though 
up to their middle in water, ill-housed and ill-fed, the men 
worked with a will; bridges were built over the flooded low 




Dunkirk and the Battle of the Dunes. 



lands, the canals from Hondschoten and Furnes were repaired, 
and in twenty-four hours after their completion the army 
stood upon the Dunes. 

The garrison of Dunkirk, though not as large as it should 
have been, yet numbered nearly three thousand men. Part 
of these troops had been camped outside, but they were now 
drawn into the fortress. Don John and Conde, who with 
their armies were in Brussels, supposed that as a matter of 
course Turenne would first besiege Furnes, Bergen and 



560 THE ENEMY ASTONISHED. 

Gravelines, and thus consume much time. Indeed, Don 
John reinforced the garrison of St. Omer, believing it to be 
threatened rather than Dunkirk. They never gave a thought 
to the French being able to reach Dunkirk ; nor did they 
believe Turenne could there victual his army. Had the 
enemy been on hand near Furnes or Bergen, even in small 
force, Turenne could hardly have prevented their marching 
into Dunkirk and forestalling his operations ; but, as is wont 
to be the case, Turenne's boldness was an appeal to Fortune 
which the fickle goddess could not disregard. 

Having reached the place and invested it before the Span- 
iards knew of his intention to do so, Turenne was scarcely 
better off. No materials were at hand to build a line of cir- 
cumvallation ; the wind overnight would blow down the 
works which the men had piled up during the day, or the 
tide would wash them away ; all material had to come from 
Calais as well as forage and rations. Turenne was repeating 
Conde's experience of a few years before under vastly worse 
conditions. 

Thunderstruck at the news that Turenne had laid siege to 
Dunkirk, Don John and Conde speedily started thither, but 
Turenne had already blockaded the sea front by means of the 
English troops under Generals Lockhart and Morgan, aided 
by the fleet of twenty ships of the line and a number of 
frigates, and had protected himself by a line of circumvalla- 
tion on the land side. The labors of the men were a fit com- 
plement of the constancy of their leader. The marshal had 
put himself and them in a place where there was but one 
outlet, — victory. Had he failed and the French been com- 
pelled to retreat, the whole force would beyond a peradven- 
ture have been destroyed. There was no choice except to 
win ; Turenne determined to win, and fortune smiled upon 
his efforts. Trenches were opened at the beginning of 



DON JOHN AND CONDE COME UP. 561 

summer, on the night of June 4-5, one set for the English, 
one for the French, and a number of sorties were repulsed. 
Seven days later, on July 12, Don John, Conde and the whole 
Spanish army came up, and at once sent forward a force to 
reconnoitre Turenne's position. 

Turenne had already heard of their arrival at Furnes. 
They had marched so hurriedly that they had brought no 
artillery, and were ill supplied with infantry ammunition, 
believing that they could relieve Dunkirk by a coup de main, 
and that Turenne's lines could not be so stout but that they 
could break through. This was an assumption which might 
hold in the case of a fortress approachable on all sides, but 
not in the case of Dunkirk. 

Don John called a council of war. Conde advised camp- 
ing between the canals of Furnes and Hondschoten, to wait 
for the artillery, and meanwhile to harass the enemy and 
cut off his rations. Don John decided to advance on 
Turenne's lines in his actual condition and at once, though 
the ground was such that his cavalry had not space to 
manoeuvre ; nor were there any guns to oppose to those of 
the French. 

The only means of arriving from Furnes, which is near the 
coast, to the dunes or sandhills on which Dunkirk lies, was 
by marching between the sea and the Furnes canal. This 
path was composed solely of beach and dunes, and narrowed 
as it approached Turenne's lines. It was, moreover, cut up 
by innumerable little canals and waterways, natural and arti- 
ficial. However difficult it was to marshal troops on such 
terrain, the archduke was determined to raise the sieo-e, and 
Conde had no means of opposing his will. 

Turenne, who was not aware of the badly equipped condi- 
tion of the enemy, saw that his lines were not strong enough 
to defend against a well-directed attack in force ; and he was 



562 THE SPANISH WITHOUT GUNS. 

by nature more inclined to the offensive. He left six thousand 
men in the trenches to push the work on the siege, which had 
already reached the counterscarp, but which had not yet got a 
secure footing, concentrated the rest, nine thousand foot and 
six thousand horse, with ten guns, behind the works near the 
sea opposite where the enemy was approaching; personally 
headed a regiment of cavalry ; and on June 13 attacked the 
Spanish van, consisting of a large force of horse, and drove it 
back. In the combat Hocquincourt, who had recently gone 
over to Conde, was killed. 

The enemy's main force was still five miles distant. Tu- 
renne marched out of his lines and drew up to await the 
Spaniards, who on the same day advanced into closer contact, 
while the marshal did the like, seized some of the higher 
dune-hills, and threw up such works as the sandy soil and 
absence of material permitted. The rival lines were now 
within two thousand yards, and both bridged the Furnes 
canal in several places. A deserter — a page who had fled 
from his master — came in during the succeeding night and 
found Turenne wrapped in his mantle, cogitating the events 
of the morrow. The page brought the news that the enemy 
had no guns, a fact which gave Turenne fresh ardor. He 
determined on summary attack, and sent to ask his English 
allies if they sustained his reasons. " Whenever Marshal 
Turenne is ready, so are we," said they ; " he can give us his 
reasons after we have whipped the enemy." 

The Spaniards probably had no great confidence in Conde ; 
they certainly did not listen to him ; they were convinced 
that Turenne would not attack them, and their dispositions 
were far from sound. Turenne had sent his train to Mardyk 
and neighboring places, so as to be prepared for failure as 
well as success. He now drew up in two lines, with the right 
flank on the canal and the left on the sea, where the English 



A SLOW ADVANCE. 563 

fleet supported it, the foot in the centre, and the horse, sus- 
tained by a few battalions, on either flank, ten squadrons 
in reserve behind each wing. The English were in the left 
wing, the French composed the right and part of the left. A 
flying column of horse lay behind the army to head off sorties 
from the town, or to help any part of the line which might 
become depleted. 

The Spanish army had fourteen thousand men, of which 
six thousand were horse, but their artillery, as reported, had 
not come up, and all their force was not put in ; for part, it 
is alleged, had been sent out foraging. They approached 
quite near the French position, having set up the foot in the 
front line, the horse in the second, posted on the right in 
four lines, on the left in six or eight lines, on account of 
the narrow terrain — which was barely a league in width 
— between the Furnes canal and the sea. Don John com- 
manded the Spanish right, Concle the left. In this position 
they spent the night. Next day, June 14, Turenne, with 
entire confidence that he should beat the enemy, marched 
forward, attacked them at daybreak with a heavy artillery 
fire, and then followed up the attack with his troops. The 
enemy's outposts were driven in, and Turenne was anxious to 
get at the main line ; but in his memoirs he complains of the 
slowness of the march in line of battle. It was indeed slow 
at that day, and the guns, hard to work, could deliver but four 
or five shots during the advance. 

When Don John observed the English fleet manoeuvring off 
the shore, he feared to send his cavalry into action along the 
beach, lest it should be destroyed by the fire of the ships, and 
drew it up in rear of the infantry. Thus hi's right flank was 
not protected in the usual manner by horse, and the foot felt 
the less secure. The English regiments advanced with deter- 
mination and fell on the enemy's right, where stood the best 



564 SHARP FIGHTING. 

Spanish foot, well posted on a dune-hill; and they were 
sustained by cross-fire from the fleet and by the action of 
the left-wing French horse, which joined in the attack on the 
Spanish right, and then outflanked it by moving along the 
beach. The English charge, despite stubborn courage, was 
not at first successful ; they advanced thrice, and were thrice 
rolled back from the dune-hills by main push of Spanish pikes. 
But British blood was up ; they would not be denied ; the 
old Cromwellian heart was there. " The French fight like 
men ; but those English fight like demons," said Don John, 
who with Caracena bravely sought to repair their errors by 
honest Spanish gallantry. The beach being disgarnished of 
Spanish troops, the French were able in addition to the cav- 
alry to get some guns trained on the Spanish right flank on 
the dune-hills and to batter it heartily. The Spanish cavalry 
was well to the rear, and in such close masses that it could not 
disengage itself to charge. 

Meanwhile the French infantry of the centre, struggling 
through the deep sand, smartly fell on the main line, and 
after some close work drove it in. The Spaniards of the 
right, thus taken in front and on both flanks, were finally 
defeated with great slaughter, fled in confusion, and were 
sharply pursued, though Conde sent some horse out to take in 
reverse the French squadrons, which had advanced too far. 

On the Spanish left, where Conde stood, the ground was 
not so easily won. Conde had divined that defeat lay before 
the allies. " Have you ever been in a battle ? " asked he of 
the duke of Gloucester before the action opened. " No." 
"Well, you'll see a big one lost in half an hour," rejoined 
Conde. But he hoped to cut through and succor Dunkirk. 
Crequi commanded on the French right ; Turenne was every- 
where. At the outset the Spanish first line of troops was 
unsettled by the demoralization of two battalions, who fled 



TURENNE WINS. 565 

after one discharge. Turenne attacked with his cavalry and 
drove back Conde four hundred paces ; but Conde rallied, 
charged with his massed column on the less numerous French 
horse, threw it back six hundred paces, and all but broke 
through Turenne's line, though the infantry behaved with 
stanchness; and finally the mass of foot on the dunes 
stopped his progress. Fearing disaster in case Conde made 
another charge, Turenne headed some fresh horse in person 
to forestall such an event, and after desperate fighting, — the 
Spanish left being weakened by the disaster to the right, — 
drove in his line and almost captured the prince himself, 
whose cavalry had got dispersed. The victory was complete, 
and Turenne, careful not to give Conde an opportunity to 
rally, followed it smartly up. 

During the battle the garrison under the marquis of Ley- 
den made a hearty sortie, and reached and burned the tents 
of the battalions in the besieging lines ; but he was eventu- 
ally driven back. 

The French loss was small ; the Spanish army lost one 
thousand men, killed and wounded, and three thousand pris- 
oners. It fled to Fumes, to which place Turenne followed, 
and here, under the guns of the fortress, pursuit was checked. 
On the advice of the duke of York, the Spanish army shut 
itself up in the fortresses, Conde in Ostende, Fuensaldegna 
in Nieuport, Don John in Bruges, and the prince of Ligny 
in Ypres. Such was the battle of the Dunes. 

Having pursued the beaten army as far as Furnes, Turenne 
returned to the siege, which he prosecuted with vigor. The 
English had been gallant and useful in the battle, but they 
were less practiced in sieges and could not do much here. A 
lodgment was made on the counterscarp by a sharp attack, 
and the besiegers made their way to the foot of the last 
work. Shortly, on June 25, Dunkirk surrendered, it being 



566 OTHER FORTRESSES SURRENDER. 

the ninth day after the battle, and was, according to agree- 
ment, delivered to the English. The siege had cost many- 
men on both sides ; one half the garrison had fallen. Leyden 
was killed. 

Few sieges redound more to the credit of any captain than 
Dunkirk to that of Turenne. The courage with which he 
undertook an almost hopeless task, because it was the thing 
to be done, and the constancy with which he carried the work 
to completion, are admirable from every standpoint. 

Two days after the surrender of Dunkirk, Bergen was sur- 
rounded ; trenches were opened ; next day the outworks were 
captured and a lodgment made in the counterscarp ; and on 
the 29th the place surrendered its garrison of nine hundred 
men as prisoners of war. Furnes, which had but eighty men, 
also capitulated. Turenne sent a body of troops to Rous- 
briigge to watch Ypres, and marched to Dixmuiden, which 
lay between the four fortresses above named, took it July 
6, after no great effort, and thus cut the Spanish army in 
four parts. He was planning to move on Nieuport and 
Ostende, hoping to destroy the enemy in detail, when Maz- 
arin, owing to the king's illness, unwisely commanded him 
to cease operations. 

On the king's recovering, to give La Ferte a chance to dis- 
tinguish himself' he was sent to besiege Gravelines, while 
Turenne sent an observing detachment to Nieuport, held his 
own position at Dixmuiden, and thus protected him, in addi- 
tion to reinforcing him with a thousand men. An army 
under Marsin coming from Luxemburg by the upper Lys and 
Ypres to relieve Gravelines, Turenne took post at Dunkirk, 
and put out a curtain of detachments to head Marsin off ; 
the latter retired again to Ypres and the upper Lys. La 
Ferte took Gravelines in twenty-six days, after much loss 
and rather inexpertly, and then went back to France. 



A REMARKABLE CAMPAIGN. 567 

Partly from La Ferte's troops, Turenne then placed a 
reserve of ten thousand foot and ten thousand horse at Hesdin 
to protect the frontier ; assembled the rest at Dixmuiden, and 
marched on the Lys and the Scheldt, sending raiders as far as 
Brussels ; won Oudenarde, surprised and beat the prince of 
Ligny at the Lys, captured Ypres, September 26, in a five 
days' siege, rested his troops a few days, covered for four 
weeks the new building of works at Menin and Oudenarde, 
and took Grammont and Ninove. He had thus overrun a 
large part of the Spanish Netherlands. As December came 
on, Turenne left five thousand men in the captured fortresses, 
and returned with the rest to France. 

This remarkable campaign — the siege of Dunkirk, the 
battle of the Dunes and the overrunning of the Netherlands 
— greatly aided in making the terms of the treaty of the 
Pyrenees favorable to France. Turenne was created Mare- 
chal general des armees ; had he been willing to change his 
religion, he could have become constable of France. 

Turenne exhibited military and personal gifts of the very 
highest order. If he had been independent so as to work on 
a larger scale, he might possibly have reached equality with 
the six great captains. But he was always hampered by the 
political difficulties of the king, and particularly by the 
enmity of the ministers. He possessed the intellect and char- 
acter, but never had the requisite opportunity. On the other 
hand Conde, while full of the resources which make the bat- 
tle-captain, and brilliant in some ways which Turenne was not, 
boasted qualities of endurance, patience and equanimity less 
marked than his opponent. One can imagine Conde beating 
Turenne in a great battle, but one would expect Turenne to 
win any campaign from Conde under equal conditions. 

After the peace of the Pyrenees in 1659, Conde was rein- 
stated in all his honors and property, returned home and 



568 PEACE OF THE PYRENEES. 

entered the service of France. France received some terri- 
torial enlargements, especially in the Spanish Netherlands ; 
the duke of Lorraine was partially reinstated; and Louis 
XIV. married Maria Theresa, daughter of the king of Spain, 
who, in consideration of a dowry, renounced her right of 
inheritance. 




French Dragoon. 
(17th Century.) 



XLV. 

ARMY ORGANIZATION AND TACTICS. EARLY SEVEN- 
TEENTH TO EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

Standing armies became common in the seventeenth century. No great 
improvements were made, except in details ; the method was cumbrous ; Gus- 
tavus' system was imitated in letter and not in spirit. Bayonet and flint-lock 
were introduced ; cavalry grew lighter ; uniforms came into general use ; and 
companies, squadrons and regiments were more regular in strength. Artillery 
was not up to Gustavus' scale of lightness, but ordnance and the theory of gun- 
nery improved. In 1648 the foot still habitually stood in eight ranks ; but 
Turenne reduced the depth, and later it got down to three. The horse also 
rode in three ranks ; but the cavalryman rarely used cold steel. Marches were 
in several columns, and were slow, as roads often had to be made. Good posi- 
tions rather than intrenched camps came into favor ; but battle was less consid- 
ered than manoeuvring. Pursuit was rare ; outpost service began ; armies grew 
to be larger ; pontoons were now common ; and the baggage trains were enor- 
mous. Rationing was awkwardly done, but medical service grew in efficiency. 
Generals were usually much hampered by the governments. Engineering 
developed more than any other art ; fortresses became numerous and strong. 
The era was one of sieges, manoeuvres on the enemy's communications and 
small war. Battles lacked character and were usually accidental. The spade 
almost replaced the musket ; armies moved from one strong place to another, 
or from siege to siege. War lost some of its horrors, but was still costly in 
men and material. Whatever success was won by any general came from his 
own ability. 

By the middle of the seventeenth century nations had 
learned, in large part from the lessons of the Thirty Years' 
War, that there was not only more security, but more econ- 
omy in keeping on foot at all times at least the skeleton 
organization of a considerable body of troops, than there was 
in discharging at the end of every campaign the men who had 



570 IMPROVEMENTS IN DETAIL. 

fought through it, and making new levies for the next one. 
Hence, following in the footsteps of Sweden, standing armies 
may be said to have become universal towards the end of this 
century, a fact which naturally fostered more careful disci- 
pline and a deeper study of the real problems of war. After 
Sweden, France was the first country, under the leadership of 
Louvois, the Great Monarch's great — if narrow — war min- 
ister, to found a permanent force ; Brandenburg, under the 
Great Elector, followed ; and other nations gradually dropped 
into line. After this period only a part of the forces under 
the colors were disbanded at the close of any given war. 

The period following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 
gave no great impulse to the art of war proper, but though 
the foundation on which men worked was an unreal one, there 
were many and marked improvements in matters of detail. 
During the era of Gustavus Adolphus it was Sweden that led 
in shaping war towards its modern conditions; during the 
era of Louis XIV. (le grand siecle) it was France. 

So far as the infantry went, the chief improvements were 
in the armament, — the introduction of bayonet and flint- 
lock. The bayonet, said to have been first used in 1660 by 
General Martinet (father of rigidity in drill and discipline), 
and to have originated in Bayonne, gave the death-blow to 
the pikemen, for the musketeer was now equipped for both 
distant and hand to hand fighting ; and the flint-lock made 
the fire of a line of foot much more rapid and telling. The 
several armies of Europe, which had essentially varied in 
form from the Spanish masses to the Swedish three-rank 
line, grew to a much greater resemblance in organization and 
appearance ; the light and heavy foot, as separate arms, dis- 
appeared, and the only light troops remaining were the com- 
pagnies /ranches of France, the J'dger or Schiitzen of Ger- 
many, and the Pandours of Austria. Grenadiers for hurling 



THE SEVERAL ARMS. 571 

hand grenades made their appearance, first by companies, 
then by regiments. 

Uniforms were introduced by Louis XIY. in his guards in 
1665, and gradually came into general use. There had been 
uniforms before, but all the troops did not wear them; a 
company or a regiment was a harlequin affair compared to 
the troops of the eighteenth century. 

The company was the tactical unit, but it consisted of vary- 
ing numbers, from fifty or sixty men in France to two or 
three hundred in Austria. Battalions varied equally, from 
five companies in Brandenburg to seventeen in France. 

The cavalry was made lighter in arms and equipment. The 
first idea of the knight, on the discovery of gunpowder, had 
been to encase himself and his steed in impenetrable steel ; 
but as firearms had gained in penetration, horse armor finally 
disappeared, and only helmet and breastplate remained to the 
heavy trooper. Pistols, carbines and musketoons were the 
firearms of the cavalry ; a sword or sabre the cold weapon. 
Dragoons carried the infantry musket with a bayonet, and 
came more and more into favor. They, with cuirassiers and 
irregular light horse, made up the bulk of the mounted troops ; 
but mounted grenadiers were also introduced. 

The squadron was the tactical unit of the cavalry, and 
consisted of a total of about one hundred and seventy men 
in three companies. The regiments varied from four hun- 
dred to eighteen hundred men in strength, according to the 
decade or the country. 

Artillery ceased to be merely a guild of cannoneers, as it 
had long been, and became an inherent part of the army. 
More intelligence was devoted to, and more money spent on, 
this arm ; it grew in strength and importance, and was 
markedly improved. But while artillery service ceased to 
be a trade, it did not put on the dignity of a special arm, 



572 ARTILLERY AND INFANTRY. 

nor was artillery of any great utility in the field until well 
along in the eighteenth century. Guns, however, in imita- 
tion of the Swedes, were lightened, particularly so in France ; 
powder was gradually compounded on better recipes; gun- 
metal was improved ; paper and linen cartridges were intro- 
duced ; gun-carriages were provided with the aiming wedge ; 
and many new styles of guns and mortars, and ammunition 
for them were invented. Science lent its aid to practical men, 
and not only exhausted chemical ingenuity in preparing pow- 
der and metal, but mathematical formulas were made for the 
artilleryman, and the value of ricochet firing was discovered. 
Louis XIV. founded several artillery schools, and the crea- 
tion of arsenals was begun. Finally the artillery was organ- 
ized on a battery and regimental basis, and caref id rules were 
made for the tactics of the guns. These were served by dis- 
mounted men and generally hauled by contract horses. 

But although sensibly improved, the artillery, in addition 
to being slow of fire, was still unskillf ully managed ; it stood 
in small bodies all along the line of battle ; and being heavy 
and hard to haul, principally because the same guns were 
used for sieges and for field work, it was far from being, 
even relatively to the other arms, the weapon which it is 
to-day. 

At the end of the Thirty Years' War the infantry habitu- 
ally stood in eight ranks, the pikemen in the centre and the 
musketeers on the flanks. Gustavus had made a six-deep 
file, which deployed to fire into one three deep ; but though 
this was not at once taken up by the other nations, even those 
who were his admirers and imitators, still the improvement 
in firearms necessarily led to a less deep formation. It was 
Turenne who first reduced the French file to six men ; whence 
it was further diminished to four, three and even two men. 
The ranks stood four paces apart, but closed up to fire, and 



IMPROVEMENT IN FIREARMS. 573 

doubled up for a charge. The formation of squares was com- 
mon, a relic of the Spanish " battles." 

The horse rode in three ranks, of which the third was often 
trained to file out, ploy into closer order, and envelop the 
enemy's flanks. The squadrons stood at squadron distance 
from each other. The French at times rode in two ranks, to 
make a longer front. The drill manoeuvres of the cavalry 
were simple, and commonly performed at a trot. 

The improvement of firearms had one lamentable sequence, 
— the troops forgot that at times they must still rely on the 
cold steel ; they deemed a stout fire the best attack that could 
be given ; and a bold and skillful manoeuvre or an assault, 
even though crowned with success, was looked upon as a dan- 
gerous departure from correct precedent, — a blunder. Even 
the cavalry (except the Swedish) so far forgot its role as to 
believe that its fire was its strongest point. In any event a 
few salvos were given before a charge, if one was made, and 
by such tactics cavalry soon lost its elan. Even in a charge 
they rode at a slow trot, and the dragoons mostly fought as 
and with the infantry. Few men were capable of doing what 
Conde did at Rocroy. He was an exception in the use of 
cavalry. 

Marches were conducted in what seems to us a highly cum- 
brous fashion. As a general rule, an army moved in three, 
five or more columns, the middle one consisting of the artil- 
lery and trains, and the outer ones of cavalry. This de- 
manded the preparation of roads, and cost much labor and 
loss of time, compensated for only by the enemy being tied 
down by the same method. To change a camp to a place ten 
miles distant, if in the presence of the enemy, roads would be 
constructed so as to enable the troops to move according to a 
given formula in a set number of columns. The roads all 
over Europe, from early winter to late spring, fully six 



574 



MARCHES CUMBROUS. 



months, were impassable, and necessitated going into winter- 
quarters, and during this season superior officers were apt to 
go off on leave of absence. It was only a man of exceptional 
energy who would conduct a winter campaign. 




Army on the March. 

Armies no longer so uniformly intrenched their camps ; 
they took up advantageous positions ; and tents replaced bar- 
racks. They camped in a sort of order of battle with com- 
pany streets, the foot in the centre and the cavalry on the 
flanks. Able generals made their camps coincide with the 
topography ; not so the average officer. 



BATTLE RARE. 575 

But the lack of mobility of organized forces was their 
chief characteristic. Manoeuvres were slow and cumbrous. 
Even the French could not manoeuvre as we understand it ; 
and so soon as an army sought to go beyond the simplest 
tactics or to change its parallel order in battle, so soon did it 
run the risk of dissolution. What Gustavus had accom- 
plished in this respect did not outlive him. He was away in 
advance of his era. His adaptation of the smaller details to 
the movement of an army was as skillful as his larger views 
of strategy were profound. Not even Swedish troops after 
his death manoeuvred as rapidly and skillfully as his own 
Royal Army. 

Battle was the last thing thought of except by such men as 
Conde, Turenne, Prince Eugene or Marlborough. When one 
occurred, it was rather apt to be a battle of accident ; a delib- 
erately planned engagement was rare. A decisive battle like 
Eocroy, Allerheim, Blenheim or Turin was yet more rare. 
Few generals, when they fought, did so in other than in par- 
allel order. Flank attacks, not to speak of grand-tactics, as 
Frederick or Napoleon understood them, were almost unheard 
of. The English were perhaps as original as any other people 
in this matter, and sought to make the infantry and cavalry 
sustain each other in their attack. 

Pursuit, as Alexander had pursued, was unknown. Even 
after a great victory, the victors remained on the field of 
battle. It was looked on as a sort of blunder to pursue, lest 
the enemy should turn and renew the battle. A bridge of 
gold was to be preferred. 

Outpost service was begun in this era, and reached a con- 
siderable development. This was looked on as the best school 
for the soldier. Small war and manoeuvring over extensive 
territory were the operations most highly considered. To 
manoeuvre your enemy out of his chosen position was deemed 



576 VICTUALING. 

a greater feat, and more in accordance with the true princi- 
ples of the art, than to destroy or disable his army in a great 
battle. 

Compared with earlier times, the armies of the last part 
of this era were numerically large, — the armies of France 
reaching often a total as high as two hundred thousand men. 
The proper ratio of the three arms was by no means set- 
tled. Cavalry was proportionately numerous, at times quite 
equaling the infantry, or even exceeding it, while in line it 
occupied thrice the space. Artillery averaged one gun per 
thousand men. 

Pontoon trains grew to be more common, and an immense 
amount of private baggage and numerous camp followers 
cumbered the army trains, to such an extent that the tale of 
non-combatants often rose to equal the for-duty roster. 

It had become the fashion to imitate the methods of Gus- 
tavus Adolphus, but it was generally only the letter and not 
the spirit which was imitated. This applied to the system of 
victualing armies from established magazines. The principal 
magazine of any given army was as a rule a fortress, where 
large supplies were accumulated. In case of danger, the 
meal or flour was baked into bread at the magazine ; otherwise 
it was transported two or three days' march towards the 
army, and there baked in field bakeries. Bread for from six 
to nine days was sent forward to the troops. As the ration 
was not composed of concentrated material, this required 
immense trains, which were managed by contractors. Sol- 
diers were expected to carry three days' rations in their hav- 
ersacks, a supply which they eked out by depredations on the 
country. Detachments baked in the neighboring towns : 
small ones were boarded by the inhabitants. 

All this practically prevented troops from moving to any 
distance from their magazines. When an army had got five 



CIVILIAN INTERFERENCE. 577 

days' march away from its principal magazine, it must sit 
down and wait for the establishment of a new one. While 
this made it reasonably certain that the troops would be fed, 
it prevented any but the slowest and most limited move- 
ments. Turenne broke through this magazine habit, and 
frequently rationed his army by forced requisitions on the 
country. At times his marches were rapid and extensive. 

Medical service was more carefully attended to in this era 
than ever before. Especially the French had an excellent 
hospital staff attached to its armies; not excellent in the 
sense of our Sanitary Commission or the Red Cross service, 
but a marked gain on what existed in the previous genera- 
tions. For in almost all wars prior to this period, to be 
severely wounded meant, if massacre was escaped, to be left 
to the tender mercies of the elements, or to the robbery and 
violence of the human wolves who prowled about the battle- 
fields. 

A marked factor in the slow and trammeled method of the 
armies of this era was the control exercised over generals in 
the field by the home government, either king or minister. 
A general had his plan of campaign marked out to him by 
men quite unfamiliar with war, and certain geographical lim- 
itations were set to his action, irrespective of any conditions 
which might arise. Marshal Turenne was a noteworthy 
example of this pernicious interference. And as, moreover, 
wars were wont to be conducted by allies, the general of each 
army being subject to separate control, as well as not infre- 
quently at odds with his fellows, the lack of vigor and pur- 
pose was scarcely to be wondered at. We have only to recall 
Conde in the service of the Spanish government, to see how 
great this evil might be. 

But in the armies themselves, the imitation of Gustavus, 
even if misguided, had brought about a much better state of 



578 IMPROVEMENTS OF THE ERA. 

discipline than had theretofore existed. Except that gold 
and family influence were potent to secure military commis- 
sions or unearned promotion, and that luxury was rampant 
in many of the armies, — things never tolerated by Gustavus, 
— this feature is a distinct tribute to the great Swede. 

The end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eigh- 
teenth century formed a brilliant epoch in engineering. Espe- 
cially in France and the Netherlands, such distinguished men 
as Vauban and Coehorn carried this branch of the military 
art far beyond other countries. Fortifications covered every 
part of Europe. Whole frontiers bristled with them, and 
every important town became a fortress. The skill with 
which works were erected to resist the armament of the day 
is beyond praise. 

The art of besieging was equally advanced by the intro- 
duction of parallels and ricochet firing, and in the improve- 
ments of the methods of approach. 

This era, then, is one of the growth of deployments for 
firing, as against the massing of troops ; of the use of cold 
steel ; of brilliant advance in engineering ; of wrong or mis- 
taken theories and singular immobility of armies. Yet it 
was an era which continued the good work begun by Gus- 
tavus Adolphus, and helped to lay the foundation for the 
new art of war to be soon expounded by the great masters, 
Frederick and Napoleon. 

Owing to the general introduction of firearms, and to 
the vast increase of material of war, which it was deemed 
essential to transport with the armies ; and owing to the 
necessity of securely keeping this material and of safely 
bringing it to the front, there grew to be a nervous dread on 
the part of the commanding officers, of being severed from 
their communications. Gustavus had introduced method into 
war ; his successors and imitators sought to reduce his 



OVER-CAUTIOUS METHOD. 579 

method, to a set of theoretical rules, which should bind every 
one, under however varying factors. As in the case of other 
great captains, Gustavus' imitators failed to understand his 
method, and while copying his detail, quite lost sight of his 
general aim. Unmindful of changed conditions, forgetful 
that Gustavus could be bold and rapid as well as methodical 
and cautious, the theorists of this era sought, by blind adher- 
ence to his system of slow and cautious manoeuvres, to develop 
a new art of war. So soon as they entered a territory, they 
intrenched themselves so as to be sure to hold it ; they con- 
tented themselves with capturing or defending fortresses ; 
they dared not move far from their magazines lest these 
should be cut off by the enemy, and they rarely went beyond 
the conduct of small war. The fact that the early wars of 
this era were largely in the Netherlands, a country clotted 
with fortified towns, and cut by numerous rivers, dikes and 
artificial streams, increased the timidity of the prevailing 
method, and reduced operations to cautious manoeuvring to 
cut the enemy's or preserve one's own communications with 
important magazines. 

It was deemed practically impossible to pass an enemy's 
fortress without leaving a large force to observe it. Sieges 
were long, and costly in men and material ; a captured town 
was wont to be destroyed during or after the siege ; and the 
vicinity was invariably reduced to a desert. Or, at a given 
period in the siege, the garrison capitulated, marched out 
to join its own forces, and large sums were spent to repair 
the damage done. The more fortresses an army of invasion 
captured the more garrisons it detailed, and the weaker it 
became ; the enemy, meanwhile, gaining as it lost. 

The objective of a campaign was, as a rule, the capture of 
some special fortress, and one half the army would besiege 
it while the other manoeuvred to keep the enemy from 



580 INDECISIVE BATTLES. 

approaching to raise the siege. If it was a campaign of 
manoeuvres on the enemy's communications, the army was 
split up into detachments, each of which conducted an absurd 
small war, in the belief that the sum of the small successes 
would add up to as much as the result of one great victory. 
More than half the time, armies were consuming bread, and 
using up material, without doing any acts which, according to 
our estimate, fall under the head of conducting serious war. 

As pursuit was never made, so battles lacked character and 
decisiveness. This grew to be so marked a feature of the sys- 
tem that military men finally came to condemn battles as 
costly in lives and unfruitful in results. To come to battle 
was deemed almost a blunder ; such a campaign as 1646 or 
1675 was deemed to show higher skill than those culminating 
in distinguished battles, even if decisive; and except Blen- 
heim, Turin and Kamillies, all the general engagements of 
this era might in a sense be called useless, for no results fol- 
lowed on a victory. The march on and battle of Turin was 
a brilliantly conceived and ably conducted operation, taken as 
a whole, the best of this era ; but even Blenheim and Ramil- 
lies were fruitful quite as much by accident as by design. 
The battles of Conde and Turenne were in no sense as clear 
in design and decisive in results as was Turin ; or indeed as 
were Breitenfeld or Liitzen. 

With the disappearance of battles as a factor in the success 
of operations, there arose a false estimate of the value of 
movements or positions taken to sever the communications of 
the enemy, or to conserve one's own. A general who com- 
pelled his enemy to retreat by cutting him off from his maga- 
zines of food or war-material was held to do a more able act 
than one who in a great battle destroyed his enemy's army ; 
and he was honored accordingly. Thus the usual campaign 
was narrowed down to operations against the enemy's com- 



A FICTITIOUS ART. 581 

munications, to feints to draw his attention from the real 
manoeuvre, to attacks on isolated places by lesser detachments, 
and to small war of all kinds. Armies sought positions of 
security and intrenched, or else shut themselves up in forti- 
fied towns or camps. Nothing was done without the aid of 
strong lines. It was the era of the spade. The general who 
best understood how to suit his works to his position was the 
man who won. For to attack a fortified line was deemed a 
hazard not to be lightly undertaken. 

War lost somewhat of its horrors, to be sure, but the loss 
of men, owing to the long drawn out character of the opera- 
tions, was no less than of yore ; and the expenditure of wealth 
was greater. Wars were wont to be ended by the exhaustion 
of the exchequer of one or other opponent, not by any par- 
ticular military success. 

The result of all this misapplication of principle was that, 
with the exception of a few brilliant generals, war was con- 
ducted on an entirely fictitious basis. Nothing in war except 
the campaigns of these generals can be deemed other than 
trivial. Even they were often trammeled by the slow and 
ill-conceived method of the day. Whatever success was won 
by Turenne, Conde, Eugene, Marlborough, Montecuculi, Ven- 
dome and Villars was due to their own individuality and 
strength. But though it is their campaigns which developed 
whatever growth there was, none of them can be said to have 
earned the place in the rank of Great Captains which is 
clearly due to Gustavus Adolphus. 




Pistol Sword. (16th Century.) 



XLYI. 

TURENNE IN HOLLAND. 1672. 

While the other European powers were husy, Louis XIV. saw a chance to 
conquer the Netherlands, and in 1667-68, with Turenne leading, he overran 
Flanders, and Vauban fortified it. Meanwhile Conde' conquered Franehe 
Comte\ The Dutch formed a Triple Alliance with Sweden and England to 
restore the balance of power ; but in 1672 this was broken up, and Louis had such 
allies that he could invade Holland from the east. Under Turenne and Cond£, 
Louis' army, one hundred thousand strong, entered Holland. The generals 
advised destroying all the fortresses they took so as not to parcel out the troops 
in garrisons, and to push on to Amsterdam ; but Louis and Louvois, his war-min- 
ister, could not see so far ; time was lost, and William of Orange flooded the 
country, and prevented an advance. In August Turenne, with seventeen thou- 
sand men, was sent to head off the two armies under the Great Elector and Mon- 
tecuculi, forty-three thousand strong, which were marching to the relief of 
Holland ; and was ordered also to protect Alsatia. Though much hampered by 
his instructions, he was able, by skillful operations, to prevent the two allied 
armies from joining, and both returned homeward. 

Richelieu had left France the most powerful nation of 
Western Europe, and Mazarin followed in his footsteps. 
The native abilities of Louis XIV., who succeeded to the 
government in 1661, were well seconded by the executive 
power of his ministers, Colbert and Louvois, of whom the 
first doubled the revenue without correspondingly oppressing 
the people, and the latter reorganized the army and made it 
an excellent fighting machine. 

The other European powers had each its own serious 
troubles. Spain had been drained by the late wars ; England 
under the Stuarts had lost the importance it had possessed 
under Cromwell ; Holland was mainly devoted to fostering its 



AN ODD CASUS BELLI. 583 

trade, and increased its fleet to the detriment of its army ; 
Germany was so completely exhausted by the Thirty Years' 
War as to be out of the race ; Austria was equally weak, and 
could scarcely hold head to the Hungarian insurrection and 
the war with Turkey. 

Louis XIV. saw an excellent opportunity of increasing his 
territory by conquering Brabant and Flanders, to whose pos- 
session he alleged a right on behalf of his wife, the daughter 
of Philip IV. of Spain, just dead. The right was no better 
nor worse than any other casus belli of the day ; the ambi- 
tion of Louis is a sufficient explanation. The alleged claim 
was that the Spanish possessions in the Belgian provinces 
were personal estates of the Spanish Hapsburgs, and that 
their descent should naturally follow local law, which would 
give these provinces to Maria Theresa. That she had 
renounced her right of inheritance was voided, Louis alleged, 
by the non-payment of her dowry. 

In 1667-68, with Turenne at the head of his principal army, 
Louis overran Flanders, in a campaign which was more like 
a triumphal march than serious war ; and Vauban was directed 
to put the conquered fortresses in a condition of perfect 
defense. In 1668 Conde conquered Franche Comte with 
equal ease, overrunning the province in two weeks. 

John De Witt, Pensioner of Holland, alarmed at these 
unwarranted proceedings, and fearful for the independence of 
his fatherland, formed with England and Sweden a Triple 
Alliance to preserve the balance of power. This temporarily 
forestalled Louis' plans, and at the peace of Aix la Chapelle 
in 1668, France returned Franche Comte to Spain and 
received in exchange twelve fortresses, among them Lille, 
Tournay and Oudenarde, on the Spanish Netherlands frontier. 
This was but an interlude, for Louis harbored a solid hatred 
for Holland, where refugees from France were protected and 



584 NEW ALLIANCES. 

allowed to issue their abusive pamphlets. In 1672 Louis, 
with that clever diplomatic intrigue in which he and his 
advisers were easily first, made a private treaty in which he 
purchased Charles II. of England, and another with Sweden. 
These treaties broke up the Triple Alliance ; and by able 
manipulations Louis managed to enlist against Holland the 
sympathies of Emperor Leopold I., the Great Elector Fred- 
erick William of Brandenburg, the duke of Neuenburg, the 
pope, and the duke of Savoy ; while other interested powers, 
including the king of Denmark and the electors of Trier and 
Mainz, remained neutral. Savoy promised three thousand 
men. Cologne and Miinster were prevailed on to join France, 
and this important accession enabled Louis to create maga- 
zines near by her border and to invade Holland from the 
weakest spot, the east, where only partially fortified cities, 
such as Arnhem, Doesburg, Ziitphen and Deventer, lay; 
whereas, on the south, opposite France, Holland was very 
strong, being protected by the Meuse and the Waal, and by 
a series of strong places, among them Bergen op Zoom, Breda, 
Herzogenbusch (Bosch), Grave and Nymwegen, in addition 
to the outlying fortress of Maestricht with a heavy garrison 
of thirteen thousand men ; and on the lower Rhine, Wesel, 
Emmerich, Rheinberg and other fortified towns. That Louis 
was angry at Holland for setting bounds to his late attempt 
at conquest, and jealous of her blooming commerce, was an 
augury that the war would be more than mere play. The 
German alliances procured for Louis an accession of twenty 
thousand troops. He was overwhelmingly strong. 

Turenne drew up the plans for the campaign, to which 
Conde contributed his approval. Depots of victual and mate- 
rial were to be established in the territory of Cologne and 
Miinster, whence the invasion was to be made as a base ; and 
instead of wasting time on besieging sundry fortresses, the 



TURENNE'S NEW SCHEME. 



585 



armies were to disregard these, turn them or observe them, 
and march as a body on Amsterdam, the capital. If for- 
tresses were taken, they were to be dismantled, to save the 
detailing of garrisons, and thus weakening the main body of 
troops. This excellent plan, which distinctly foreshadowed 
the new art of war, was carried out so far only as the march 




Holland. 



into Holland from the east was concerned. Louis and Louvois 
were not abreast with such intelligent ideas. It was only 
such an intellect as Turenne possessed which could grasp the 
advantages and promise of such a scheme. 

The French army was one hundred and two thousand 
strong, and was early assembled in cantonments : sixty thou- 
sand between the Sambre and Meuse, thirty thousand between 



586 INVASION OF HOLLAND. 

the Meuse and Moselle, and twelve thousand in the Cologne 
district. This force was then concentrated in two main 
bodies, one of sixty thousand men under the king, with the 
duke of Orleans and Turenne as leaders, and one of twenty- 
five thousand men under Conde, while a number of smaller 
detachments were to be devoted to various outside purposes. 
At sea the Count d'Estrees, with forty-four ships of the line, 
was to join the duke of York with fifty. It should be noted 
that Conde and Turenne had become reconciled ; the pique 
of the former had died with time, and they worked in unison 
and goodfellowship thenceforth. 

The Dutch had but twenty-five thousand land troops, and 
these were mercenaries. But gallant De Ruyter commanded 
ninety-one ships of the line ; the land, cut up by canals and 
dikes, was excellently calculated for defense, and John De 
Witt was a man of force and ability. 

The French had established magazines in Bonn, Neuss and 
Kaiserswerth, a fact from which De Witt drew a correct infer- 
ence as to their intentions ; and he proposed that Holland 
should take the offensive and move into the electorates of 
Cologne and Miinster, there to destroy these stores before the 
French armji had rendezvoused in the vicinity. But jeal- 
ousies and enmities prevented the recognition of his wisdom ; 
the states-general decided against his plan on the silly plea 
that France had not yet declared war. 

Early in 1672 the French invaded Holland without delay- 
ing to besiege Maestricht, which they masked. The main 
body, under the king, but really led hy Conde and Turenne, 
crossed to the right bank of the Meuse at Vise, above Maes- 
tricht, marched on the lower Rhine, and occupied without 
difficulty the ill-defended fortresses of Orsoy and Rees, which 
were taken by Turenne, and Wesel and Emmerich, which 
surrendered to Conde, as well as some others, the garrisons 



UNWISE DIVISION. 587 

of all of which were either frightened into surrender by the 
native populace, or their commanders — as a cheaper plan — 
bribed by the French generals. Conde and Turenne then, in 
the face of the enemy, and with a promptness which gave 
them a marked moral advantage over the Dutch — though 
the operation itself was easy — crossed the Rhine near Toll- 
huis, below Emmerich, at a place where, owing to the low 
water of this year, the most part of the stream could be 
forded by the cavalry, and there was scarce a hundred feet to 
swim. There was some small opposition made by a body of 
Dutch troops, but the French cavalry van soon drove it off ; 
and a bridge having been thrown, the rest of the horse and 
all the foot speedily crossed. Conde was wounded, and being 
moreover prostrated by the gout, Turenne remained in sole 
control. 

"The prince of Orange had taken position at Arnhem 
beyond the Yssel with the Dutch army, but on Turenne's 
advance he retired from this position towards Utrecht, rather 
than have Arnhem turned, as Turenne manifestly proposed to 
do. Turenne passed the Yssel near its mouth and occupied 
Arnhem. He now urged the king to push immediately on 
with the entire force towards Amsterdam, to which the road 
was quite open, and to within a few miles of which city some 
advanced parties, four thousand strong, sent ahead under 
Rochefort, had already penetrated. 

De Ruyter had some success against the allied fleets ; 
but at this time — August 27 — the De Witts fell a sac- 
rifice to an unreasoning popular tumult, and had Turenne's 
plan been carried out, nothing could have saved Holland. 
William of Orange, then twenty-two years old, was made 
stadtholder, and put at the head of affairs. Louis, at 
Louvois' instance, did just the reverse of what Turenne 
advised ; he divided his army into detachments and set t& 



588 HOLLAND PUT UNDER WATER. 

work besieging the fortresses of Nymwegen, Doesburg, 
Grave, Herzogenbusch and others, and parceled out his 
forces in garrisoning the captured places. The Dutch were 
never lacking in self - sacrifice for their little land, and 
they now resorted to extreme measures. The opening of 
the sluices and the cutting of the dikes put the whole 
country under water, and saved Amsterdam and the prov- 
ince of Holland from the French invasion. This inun- 
dation could have been prevented by Rochefort's seizing 
Muiden, where is situated the inlet of the canals ; but this 
he foolishly omitted to do, though the place was within his 
grasp ; and, having covered the country with water, William 
placed his army of thirteen thousand men upon the principal 
dikes leading to Amsterdam, now the only high roads for 
advance or retreat. The operations were thus limited so that 
a small force was the equal of a big one, and William 
was able to conclude alliances with Austria, Spain, Branden- 
burg, most of Germany and Denmark, and later too with 
England. Thus came about a general European war. 

To the peculiar terrain of Holland was in large measure 
due the course undertaken by Louis and Louvois. No coun- 
try has ever been so profusely sown with fortresses, small 
and great ; no country is easier to defend, harder to attack. 
The Dutch were good soldiers, and fought tenaciously for 
such fortresses as Maestricht, Luttich and Namur, such towns 
as Brussels and Antwerp. Another reason prevailed for the 
peculiar irregularity of Dutch operations. During all the 
wars of this era in the Low Countries, the troops under arms 
belonged to many nations and races, and served under many 
commanders ; and it was no more due to the numerous for- 
tresses than it was to the jealousies of the respective allied 
governments and of the rival generals, that the campaigns on 
Dutch soil were wont to be so singularly unsystematic. 



LOUVOIS' WEAKNESS. 589 

Until the opening of winter the flooded country precluded 
manceuvres of any kind ; and Turenne counseled a movement 
in force against Germany to forestall an attack by the new 
allies of Holland. But Louvois would not give up his plan of 
reducing the strong places, to which duty he assigned the 
duke of Luxemburg ; and the latter, with sixteen thousand 
men, was ordered to take position near Utrecht, which had 
been recently captured, while Turenne was detached with a 
paltry force of twelve thousand men to operate to the east of 
the Meuse and Waal and watch for the crossing of the elector 
of Brandenburg. Thus by fruitless detachments and sieges, 
out of a force originally of one hundred thousand men, a bare 
eighth was allotted to the leading French general with which 
to do an all-important part of its legitimate work. 

Louvois always acted in a jealous, almost a childish spirit 
towards Turenne, and was constantly doing uncalled-for and 
unwise things. On payment of a small ransom, for example, 
he discharged all the garrisons captured in the towns he 
took, — some thirty thousand men, — thus furnishing the 
Dutch with fresh troops ; while the French were depleting 
their own numbers by garrisoning these same fortresses. 
Not that such action was unwarrantable from Louvois' stand- 
point ; but if success was to be sought in worsting the enemy, 
this was no way to accomplish that end. 

In August two new armies came upon the scene : one of 
twenty-four thousand men, under the Great Elector, moved 
from Halberstadt towards Hildesheim, and an imperial army 
of nineteen thousand men under Field-Marshal Montecuculi 
advanced from Bohemia towards Erfurt ; and these two pro- 
posed, after making a junction, to cross the Rhine and operate 
in the rear of Luxemburg, to cut him off from France or 
compel him to retreat from Holland. The only force to oppose 
these armies and prevent their crossing the Rhine was 



590 TURENNE ON THE RHINE. 

Turenne's army of twelve thousand men. This was in truth a 
lamentable ending of the brilliant array which crossed the 
Rhine at Tollhuis not many weeks before. 

Turenne knew his opponents, and gauged their plans with 
skill. He had only boldness and energy to oppose to their 
numbers. He knew that they would not enter Alsatia, but 
push direct for Holland; and he believed that they would 
not operate with unity. Despite his being but one third of 
the enemy in strength, with a boldness quite at odds with the 
timorous habit of the day, he determined not to defend the 
left bank, but to cross the Rhine himself, and by an active 
offensive seek to checkmate their plan on the right bank. 
Indeed, Montecuculi had orders, though Turenne was unaware 
of it, not to conduct an offensive campaign, but to oppose 
such an one on the elector's part ; for the emperor was kept 
in a state of anxiety by the Turks in Poland and by Hunga- 
rian revolts, and was afraid to launch out in a whole-souled 
manner. Turenne increased his force to seventeen thousand 
men by detachments from the garrisons of Wesel, Rees and 
Emmerich, and marched from Wesel up the Lippe to West- 
phalia. The allies, who were aiming at the same general 
point to compel the elector of Cologne and the bishop of 
Miinster to restore to the Dutch the territory taken from 
them, and to give up their alliance with the French, on hear- 
ing of Turenne's movements changed their course southerly 
towards Fulda. Turenne pushed on up the right bank of the 
Rhine to Coblentz, and forced them to move still further south 
into the Main region, so that they could not approach the 
Rhine to effect a crossing until after passing to the south of 
the Main. 

Fearing for Alsatia, though indeed there was no threat to 
that province, Louis ordered Turenne back to the left bank 
of the Rhine, and sent Conde with eight thousand men to 



ABLE MANCEUVRING. 591 

support him. The prince of Orange made a feint towards 
the Rhine to aid his allies in crossing it ; but the operation, 
owing to the many though dispersed French detachments 
in Holland, proved to be slow and weakly conducted. He 
only captured Fauquemrne and made an attempt on Charle- 
roi. The allies, after failing to cross on the usual bridges at 
Mainz and again at Strasburg, finally managed to put their 
army over at Mainz on a bridge of their own ; but they were 
soon forced by Turenne and Conde to recross, and winter, 
sickness and hunger drove them, in January, 1673, back to 
Lippstadt in Westphalia. This was well; but from Lipp- 
stadt there was danger that the allies might march to the 
west and cross the Yssel into Holland ; and Turenne deter- 
mined to prevent this also. 

He had been forbidden by Louvois to again cross the Rhine ; 
but he went back of the minister and, on laying out his 
scheme, obtained permission from the king to do so. Mov- 
ing down to Wesel, he put over and marched on Lippstadt 
with sixteen thousand men. Unable to act together, as 
Turenne had rightly estimated, the allies gave up the idea of 
wintering in Westphalia, and retired, the elector to Branden- 
burg, after Brunswick had refused him shelter and winter- 
quarters, and Montecuculi to Bohemia. 

Thus by cleverly utilizing the want of unity of the allies, 
Turenne's manoeuvres had driven them from the Rhine region 
back towards their respective bases, and had robbed Holland 
of two strong allied armies. The Great Elector, dissatisfied 
with the emperor's laxness, concluded peace with France. 
This peace was, however, of short duration ; for in 1674 he 
renewed his alliance with Holland. 




Pistol Sword. (16th Century.) 



XLVIL 

MONTECUCULI. 1673. 

In 1673 the emperor sent Montecuculi with twenty-five thousand men to join 
the prince of Orange at Bonn. Turenne, with twenty-three thousand, was given 
the task to protect Alsatia and to prevent this junction, — two irreconcilable 
duties. He advised marching to the Bbhmerwald, if this was to be done ; but 
permission was refused. Montecuculi feinted towards Alsatia and then marched 
on the Main. The bishop of Wiirzburg, though a neutral, opened his bridges 
to the imperialists and closed them to the French, and Turenne was much 
delayed. Montecuculi manoeuvred with exceeding ability ; avoided battle, which 
Turenne sought to force on him ; and made good his crossing of the Main. 
Turenne, taking out garrisons, had but eighteen thousand men, and could not 
operate as boldly as he would have liked, owing to his orders to protect Alsatia. 
Though he knew that Montecuculi would not attempt to enter Alsatia, he yet 
had to keep south of the Main, having only one bridge. Politics had aided 
Montecuculi's able manoeuvres, and he made his junction with the Dutch at 
Bonn. This campaign redounds much to his credit. 

One of the best generals of this era, and the more interest- 
ing on account of his Military Memoirs, was Count Raimondo 
Montecuculi. We have from time to time met him in minor 
commands previous to the last campaign. Born in Modena 
in 1608, of a military family, he ran away from home to 
embrace the career of arms, enlisted and rose from the ranks. 
He served with Tilly in 1629-30, where he won a name for 
exceptional bravery. He was in numerous engagements, at 
the battles of Breitenfeld and Nordlingen, repeatedly led 
storming parties, was often wounded and captured; and 
wherever he stood, he distinguished himself. By 1642 he 
had passed through all ranks to major-general, and two years 
later he became field-marshal. In the emperor's service he 



TURENNE VERSUS MONTECUCULI. 



593 



was never out of employment and always at the front. In 
1657 he first commanded an independent army, which con- 
sisted of twenty thousand men and operated in Silesia, and 
later he served in Denmark and against the Turks. No 
general of this period has a better claim to rank with such 
men as Turenne, Eugene and Marlborough, than Raimondo 
Montecuculi. 

In the spring of 1673 the emperor made a formal declara- 
tion of war against France, and planned to push a heavy col- 
umn under Montecuculi from Bo- 
hemia towards the Rhine, where, 
near Bonn, it should cross and 
join the prince of Orange, who 
would pass the Meuse to meet 
him. Turenne wisely advised that 
an army be sent to the Bohmer- 
wald — the rugged mountainous 
country which forms the western 
boundary of Bohemia — to fore- 
stall this movement. But Lou- 
vois opposed the plan, and insisted that Turenne should take 
up a position on the left bank of the Rhine in Alsatia and con- 
fine himself to its defense, and to interrupting the two allied 
armies in their projected junction. He was given twenty- 
three thousand men to carry out these two utterly inconsist- 
ent projects. Again appealing to the king, Turenne obtained 
leave from him to conduct a defensive campaign on the right 
bank of the Rhine, but though he desired to manoeuvre well 
to the north of the Main, where he had a number of maga- 
zines left over from the last campaign, when he was opposing 
the junction of the elector of Brandenburg and Montecuculi, 
he was limited to operating in the Main country proper ; 
and he was particularly warned to do nothing which might 




Montecuculi. 



594 AN IMPOSSIBLE PROGRAMME. 

offend the neutral states. In other words, his hands were 
absolutely tied. He furnished the brain and force, but 
his superiors would not afford him the opportunity. He was 
held to prevent the junction of the imperial and Dutch 
armies on his left and to protect Alsatia on his right, and was 
limited in his movements, — instructions which before he 
opened the campaign promised failure in both tasks. In 
his frank but clear manner, Turenne protested that the 
French troops in the Netherlands were the ones to prevent 
the junction of the Dutch and imperialists ; that to protect 
Alsatia was quite inconsistent with this duty; but Louvois 
would no longer give way, and Turenne set about his thank- 
less task. 

To mislead Turenne as to his intentions, Montecuculi, after 
crossing the Bohmerwald, which he did in all security, 
directed his march, not on Bonn, but towards Niirnberg, as 
if to move well south of the Main and threaten Alsatia. 
Turenne, instead of being allowed to manoeuvre as he deemed 
best, was at once ordered from the right to the left bank of 
the Main, with a strict injunction to pay first heed to Alsatia ; 
but the German princes, who were more inclined to favor the 
emperor than the French, denied him the use of the neutral 
bridges at Aschaffenburg and Wiirzburg ; and he was in con- 
sequence compelled to build one for himself near Seligen- 
stadt. The spun-out negotiations in respect to these bridges 
materially delayed him, and when the bishop of Wiirzburg 
finally promised neutrality and Turenne was half unwillingly 
permitted to cross at Aschaffenburg, Montecuculi had already 
got from Niirnberg into the Main country. After occupying 
Aschaffenburg and sending his van to establish magazines 
in Miltenburg, Bishofsheim and various other places along 
the Tauber, which he deemed the best line to prevent the 
enemy's access to Alsatia, Turenne crossed the Main with 



OPERATIONS ON THE MAIN. 



595 



the bulk of the army, and moved to Mergentheim early in 
September, to get nearer the enemy and ascertain his move- 
ments. 

Montecuculi was evidently hugging the Main, and Turenne, 
so soon as he perceived his direction, crossed the Tauber and 
moved towards the Eothemburg country. The enemy, on 
September 10, took up a position at Windsheim ; Turenne sat 
down in his front ready to move to right or left as his opponent 
should head to the Main or towards Alsatia. He was limited 
in his orders, and knew that he was facing an able general. 




Turenne and Montecuculi. 

The imperial general had fifteen thousand foot and ten 
thousand horse ; Turenne, taking out garrisons, had fourteen 
thousand foot and four thousand horse. Montecuculi's inten- 
tion was clearly to draw Turenne away from the Main, 
and then, himself speedily crossing, to oblige the French to 
take the longer road on the south bank, while he should 
push straight for Bonn. Although on general probabilities 
Turenne may have presumed as much, yet he could not 
divine the purpose of his antagonist, and to defend Alsatia 
had been made his paramount duty. 

Turenne desired battle. If he beat the enemy, he would 



596 CURIOUS MANOEUVRING. 

have accomplished his end of holding Montecuculi back 
from both the Rhine and Alsatia ; if beaten, he could still 
retire fighting to the Tauber or the Rhine, and he felt, as 
always, confident that he should prevail. The object of Mon- 
tecuculi was to join the prince of Orange intact ; to fight was 
not in his programme ; but he did not want Turenne to think 
so. He had a solid respect for his great opponent, and cared 
to take no liberties with him. Both generals manoeuvred as 
for battle not far from Rothernburg; and the imperialists 
drew up in battle-order ; but Montecuculi kept out his first 
line, made no special advances towards accepting battle, and 
under its protection and before Turenne could marshal his 
forces and get into fighting contact, started on a skillful 
flank march with his baggage and second line towards the 
Main. Concealed by rising ground, the first line followed 
before Turenne could attack. The manoeuvre had been bril- 
liantly executed. 

So soon as Turenne discovered the withdrawal of the 
enemy, which he did just as his preparations had been com- 
pleted, he marched by his own left in the same direction, and 
though he had lost much ground by the delay, he overtook 
the enemy. The imperial army, for fear of having its tacti- 
cal shifting of ground turned into a retreat by an attack on 
its rear, again stopped and drew up ; and soon reaching a 
point opposite the new position of the enemy, Turenne recon- 
noitred and found that the imperial general had drawn up 
his line with a hill in his rear and a swamp on both flanks 
and in front, where he could not be assailed with any chance 
of success. 

That the two armies thus marched on parallel lines in the 
immediate neighborhood of each other, and without any 
attack on the part of Turenne, is explainable only by the 
difficulty in those days of deploying the cumbrous battalions 



TURENNE OUTMANCEUVRED. 597 

into battle-order. Even the flankers did not seriously 
exchange fire, and Turenne was able to pick up but a few 
stragglers and wagons. The ideas of old soldiers who have 
served in these days of rapid manoeuvres must be modified 
before they can appreciate the operations of an army of the 
seventeenth century. 

Both armies thus marched north to the angle of the Main, 
where, September 12, Montecuculi took up position at Markt- 
breit, and Turenne, restricted in his operations, placed him- 
self in his front, on the hills not far back from the river, 
watching his chance to attack the imperialists when they 
should attempt to cross. 

Montecuculi had worked hard, and had manifestly gained 
the advantage. He could now cross the Main. Had Turenne 
been able to prevent his so doing, it would have seriously lim- 
ited the operations of the imperial general, and at the same 
time have protected Alsatia. But Montecuculi had out- 
manoeuvred him, and was well posted on the river. Some 
critics make this march a long-pondered and deep-laid plan 
of the imperial marshal ; but he himself does not claim it 
to be so, and it appears rather to have been an operation 
undertaken on the spur of the moment when he met the 
French at an unexpected place. 

Montecuculi was now admirably placed ; the result of his 
manoeuvres was all that he could ask. Nearly all the bridges 
up the river were at his disposal, for, after some negotiation, 
the bishop of Wiirzburg broke his neutrality and allowed 
Montecuculi any privilege he asked ; so that he could take 
the straight road by Wiirzburg and Lohr, threaten Aschaf- 
fenburg, where Turenne had his only bridge, and thus sever 
his communications with the lower Rhine country. Politics 
was fighting against Turenne as well as the able conduct of 
his adversary. Well aware of this fact, Turenne hurried a 



598 MONTECUCULI CROSSES. 

few hundred dragoons to reinforce the garrison of Aschaffen- 
burg, and remained with the balance to confront Montecuculi 
on the Tauber ; for if he committed the error of crossing the 
Main before his opponent, the road to Alsatia would be left 
open ; and though convinced that Montecuculi had not the 
slightest intention of invading Alsatia, Turenne might not 
disregard his instructions. 

Unwilling to remain in the camp he had taken up back 
of Ochsenfurt, not only because he saw small chance of inter- 
fering with Montecuculi, but because the water supply was 
difficult and had already led to some hostile exchanges, 
Turenne sent the train ahead September 19, and next day 
the army followed. Wertheim and places enough on the 
Tauber were occupied to protect the magazines and to 
overawe the population, which was anti-French to the core. 
Glad to be rid of his opponent without battle, Montecuculi, 
whose reinforcements had run his force up to forty thousand 
men, left Marktbreit September 26, and pursuing the straight 
road, crossed the Main at Kitzingen September 27, and 
again at Wiirzburg next day, and camping at Zellingen, 
began to construct two bridges at Lohr to again reach the 
right bank. Once there, Montecuculi would have all Tu- 
renne's magazines north of the Main at his mercy, and indeed 
did carry off one convoy. 

While at Zellingen, Montecuculi's army was in the cul- 
de-sac here formed by a northerly bend of the Main ; but 
Turenne declined to attack him, as the country was heavily 
wooded and unfavorable, contained no suitable battle-ground, 
and especially as since Montecuculi's reinforcements had 
arrived, he had with him but an inferior force. Circum- 
stances had compelled him to parcel out his army, because 
limited to a defensive campaign ; while Montecuculi kept the 
imperialists in one body and well in hand, with a clean-cut 



TURENNE'S HANDS TIED. 599 

purpose. What here happened well illustrates the advan- 
tages of the initiative. 

Anxious to ascertain Montecuculi's intention, whether to 
march on Coblentz or to attack Aschaffenburg, whose garrison 
he had now increased to one thousand men, Turenne sent a 
large cavalry party to Wertheim to observe the river up 
and down, and throw a bridge at Miltenburg, to which he 
built a bridge-head. Montecuculi, with his larger army, 
could readily hold Turenne on the left bank and commit 
havoc on the right by suitable detachments: and Turenne, 
under his limited instructions, had to be watchful to commit 
no error. He sent and led out several reconnoitring parties, 
but ascertained little, for the enemy kept a heavy curtain of 
parties out. On October 3 Montecuculi crossed at Lohr and 
broke the bridges. He was now nearer Aschaffenburg and 
Frankfort than the French, and he made a clever feint as 
if to threaten Turenne's bridge. With the idea, fostered by 
the parties which the imperial general sent out to observe 
the river, that Montecuculi might possibly recross the Main, 
if only as a diversion, the French marshal strengthened all 
the places from Rotheruburg to Aschaffenburg so as to make 
the line of the Tauber and Main a network of troops. But 
when Turenne learned that Montecuculi had marched to 
Gelnhausen on the road to Frankfort, he made a strong dem- 
onstration on Steinheim, opposite Hanau, to lead his oppo- 
nent to believe that he would cross there, — an operation 
which had some effect on the neutrality of Frankfort, but in 
no wise hindered the enemy. Montecuculi then pushed 
straight on to Coblentz, where he crossed the Rhine, and 
marching rapidly on Bonn, joined the prince of Orange, as 
projected. He had, assisted by the friendly neutrality of the 
bishop of Wiirzburg, fairly outmanoeuvred Turenne, whom 
he had been able, by marching behind the Main, to keep in 



600 MONTECUCULI JOINS THE DUTCH. 

ignorance of his movements, and who was hampered by his 
absurd home orders, and by the necessity of handling the neu- 
tral territory with delicacy. His instructions compelled him 
to hold fast to the Tauber and Aschaffenburg, while Monte- 
cuculi had a clearer purpose, a larger force and an open road. 
For all this the manoeuvre redounds to the latter's credit 
as one of the most interesting pieces of work of this war. 

In 1T63 Conde had been conducting a campaign in Hol- 
land, while Louis XIV., aided by the skill of Vauban, per- 
sonally besieged and took Maestricht ; but from a multipli- 
city of reasons, Conde accomplished nothing against William 
of Orange, who managed, as agreed, to advance to Bonn to 
meet Montecuculi. In order to victual, Turenne withdrew to 
Philipsburg, where he crossed the Rhine, but to find none of 
the rations which had been promised by Louvois. All these 
adverse circumstances so greatly delayed his operations that 
he could in no event have reached the Netherlands in season 
to be of service. He had been able to protect Alsatia, but this 
province had in reality not been threatened, and Louvois' ner- 
vous fear for it had prevented Turenne from heading off the 
imperial army from its actual objective. 

Spain had joined the allies. The prince of Orange had 
thirty thousand Dutch-Spanish troops, and with Montecuculi 
he captured Bonn, and overran the whole region between the 
Meuse and Rhine, a proceeding which Conde with his twelve 
thousand men had been unable to prevent. By the opera- 
tions, originating in the hostility of Spain, the duke of Lux- 
emburg, still conducting a war of sieges in the Netherlands, 
was practically cut off from France, but under Louvois' 
orders he garrisoned such of the strong places as he could, 
and, despite all the allies' efforts, made good his junction with 
Conde. Maestricht was retaken from the French, a loss 
Louis could ill afford. 



CREDIT DUE MONTE CUCULI. 



601 



The elector of Cologne and the bishop of Miinster now 
forsook France for the allied cause ; and England, for lack 
of supplies which the parliament would not vote, made peace 
with Holland. The whole aspect of the war changed. 

In this campaign the allies had the advantage. The 
French had to vacate Holland, and the allies set themselves 
down firmly there. It was a campaign of manoeuvres solely, 
marked by not a single battle. Turenne had done all that 
his impossible orders and his limited force permitted; but 
circumstances favored the enemy and not Turenne. His 
advice in 1672 to raze the captured Dutch fortresses was now 
well proven to be sound. By their retention nothing what- 
ever had been gained, and by garrisoning them heavily the 
forces in the field under Luxemburg, Conde and Turenne 
had been kept at such low water mark that nothing could be 
expected of them. 

Montecuculi deserves all credit for cleverly utilizing his 
advantages. Opposed to Turenne, another might have let 
them slip. 




Garde du Corps. 
(1688.) 



XL VIII. 

SENEF, AUGUST 11, AND SINSHEIM, JUNE 16, 1674. 

France now assumed a defensive role. In 1674 Conde" fought a drawn 
battle with the prince of Orange at Senef to prevent him from invading 
France. There is little in this engagement except the large forces and the des- 
perate fighting to make it noteworthy, and Conde" attacked with hut a portion 
of his army. The rest of the campaign was trivial. Turenne, with a much 
smaller force, had Alsatia to defend, and did this by crossing the Rhine to 
attack the enemy. He found them at Sinsbeim, where they had taken up an 
almost unassailable position on a high plateau. Here, quite against the rules 
of the art of that day, Turenne attacked the enemy and defeated him badly. 
There was no more actual gallantry in his assault than in Condi's at Senef, but 
there was vastly more calculation, and the battle had better results. Still, the 
whole Sinsheim operation was not much more than a raid, — a blow at the 
enemy to forestall one by him. 

By the extensive combination against her, France was now 
reduced to a defensive role; but this did not prevent her 
generals from attacking the enemy. In 1674 Conde again 
commanded in the Netherlands, and on the 11th of August, 
to check the Dutch advance, he fought the bloody but drawn 
battle of Senef with the prince of Orange, who had advanced 
well on into Brabant. No peculiar results followed what the 
French deemed a victory. 

There is little about the battle of Senef except the furious 
fighting pushed by Conde, and the enormous loss stated to 
have been suffered by the allies, which commends it to our 
notice ; and it is quite doubtful whether the statement that 
the priests and their helpers, after the battle, buried twenty- 
seven thousand bodies (or half the number) within a space 



cond£ attacks. 



603 



of three leagues, is true. It was said in a letter of the Mar- 
quis of Louvois, written at the time, that the French loss was 
seven thousand men killed and wounded; and that it was 
suspected that in this number had been counted all those who, 
since the campaign opened, had died or deserted. 

The Stadtholder had sixty-five thousand men ; Condd forty- 
five thousand. The allies had advanced to Nivelle, where 
they threatened Courtray and 
Oudenarde, and were thought to 
be projecting the invasion of 
France by way of Mons and 
Cambray. Conde lay not far 
from Charleroi, on a species of 
island surrounded by a marshy 
stream, where the prince of 
Orange could not well attack 
him; and deciding therefore to 
advance on Quesnoy, the allies 
marched south to Senef, thus 
presenting the flank of their long column. On August 11, at 
the point of day, they broke camp in three columns, the im- 
perialists, the Dutch and the Spaniards, with four thousand 
horse as rear-guard, heading along the Binche road for Fayx. 
Conde had likewise broken camp and moved towards the 
marching allies ; and so soon as he perceived the order and 
direction of their columns, he resolved on attack. Though he 
had but his van with him, he sent a force to occupy Senef, 
and himself, at the head of his best cavalry, advanced on the 
rest of the allied rear-guard, which, so soon as the French 
were discovered, took up on their line of march a good posi- 
tion for defense. The preliminary attack succeeded in break- 
ing up the rear-guard, and Conde, placing his battalions of 
foot, as they successively arrived, in the most advantageous 




Cond£ (late in life). 



604 



A STRONG POSITION. 



positions, advanced on the rear column of the enemy, which 
he had now got near. To hold head to Conde until the main 
body could return, this column had drawn up on a height 
approachable only through orchards and fields whose hedges 
had been filled with musketeers, and was backed by a heavy 
line of cavalry ; but Conde's brilliant charge, well seconded 
by his lieutenants, bore fruit here also ; and this column was 
driven back to the village of Fayx. The French leader had 
opened with all the fire he had shown at Rocroy. 

To hold head against Conde's violent onset, the prince of 
Orange retraced his steps and drew up on the hills behind 

Fayx, which stand 
4// 1 from a hundred to a 

hundred and fifty feet 
above the surround- 
ing country, and 
whose slopes were at 
that time covered by 
gardens, hop - fields, 
quickset hedges and 
ditches. Into a ra- 
vine or hollow way on 
his left leading to a 
thick wood he threw 
some troops ; on the 
right, say the accounts, were marshes and orchards, and the 
ground was cut up so as to be capable of stubborn defense. 
Fayx, in front of his left centre, was held by the foot and 
artillery ; the entire position was excessively strong. 

Conde reconnoitred the new line, and despite its strength 
determined on attack. Luxemburg commanded the French 
right ; Navailles the left ; Conde and his son, the duke 
d'Enghien, the centre. Unwilling to wait for all his forces 



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Battle of Senef. 



A GALLANT ONSLAUGHT. 605 

to come up, lest the prince of Orange should make his posi- 
tion still more impregnable than it already was, Conde deliv- 
ered battle with but a part of his army, and especially lacked 
infantry. Opposite Luxemburg were the Dutch ; opposite 
Navailles the Spaniards. Conde in the centre proposed to 
attack that side of the village where lay the ravine. If he 
could occupy and hold this ravine, he would take the enemy 
in reverse and cut off the elite of their foot, which had been 
posted in Fayx. As he advanced, a body of imperial cavalry 
debouched from the wood to take his column of attack itself 
in flank, and Conde sent Luxemburg to head it off, which 
was successfully done. Meanwhile Navailles was keeping the 
Spaniards busy, but making no progress. 

Conde's onset was superb, and its vigor hustled back the 
first line of the enemy ; but the cool-headed prince of Orange 
promptly replaced it by the second. A repeated charge 
drove the enemy beyond the ravine, and the French were on 
the eve of raising the cry of victory. But to save the day 
there came to the rescue the heavy cavalry of the Stadtholder, 
and, outnumbered four to one, Conde was forced to a precipi- 
tate retreat. 

Conde was always at his best in the glow of battle ; defeat 
never cast him down. He gathered a column of cavalry and 
dragoons from Luxemburg, and once more drove in the 
enemy and solidly occupied the ravine. But horse alone 
could not keep what the impetuous rush had won. It needed 
foot. To hold the ravine definitely, Conde ordered forward 
two battalions of Swiss infantry, the only ones which hap- 
pened to be at hand; but these men, already decimated, 
could not be got to advance ; they had lost stomach for the 
day ; and before other troops could be got up, the elan of the 
manoeuvre was lost ; the ravine was retaken by William, and 
with it the battle was forfeited. 



606 HEAVY LOSSES. 

Conde was in ill case. If he retired, he might he followed 
and heaten by superior numbers. He had no more foot 
which he could put in ; his vanguard columns had hurried 
ahead of his coiys de bataille ; no artillery was at hand. 
All he could do was to hold his own till night ; and this 
he did by repeated attacks, headed by Luxemburg and 
Navailles, on the village. Had the prince advanced in force 
on Conde he would have annihilated his army ; but William, 
though astonishingly indifferent to defeat, always lacked that 
instinct of the captain which enables him to seize the auspi- 
cious moment, and was not enterprising in victory. 

Night put an end to the battle ; but desultory fighting was 
kept up till near midnight. The loss had been tremendous. 
Both armies were exhausted and terror-stricken, and both 
retired from the field. Conde's belated artillery and foot 
arrived during the night, too late to retrieve the disaster. 
It is said that Conde proposed to renew the combat on the 
morrow, with what was left of his cavalry and the foot and 
guns which had come up. But this was not to be. 

It has been alleged that the allies confessed to fifteen thou- 
sand killed and five thousand captured. The number of offi- 
cers lost was appalling. Few generals but had been killed or 
disabled. The retreat of the allies left the French a number 
of trophies. Conde treated the prisoners with generosity. 
Count Stahremberg, who was sent to Bheims, drank, at a 
banquet there held, to the health of the prince of Orange, 
who, he said, had promised him a glass of champagne in 
Champagne, " and he has kept his word ! " 

The rest of the campaign lacked importance. Conde had, 
to be sure, saved France from invasion, but at a very heavy 
cost. It seems as if he had been over eager in attacking with 
but a part of his force. He had won on other fields by the 
charges of cavalry alone, but this is not good tactics. " Cest 



TURENNE CROSSES THE RHINE. 



607 



magnijique, metis ce nest pas la guerre ! " He could not 
expect that charges of horse, however ardent, would always 
demoralize the enemy, or insure his holding what he might 
win. Cavalry is limited by the terrain. 

The elector of Brandenburg had again joined the allies ; 
some minor princes had also sided against Louis XIV., 
and the task assigned Marshal Turenne in 1674 was that 
of defending Alsatia and the middle Rhine, for which duty 
twelve thousand men were given him. His main magazines 




Sinsheim Operation. 

were at Zabern (Saverne), and in its vicinity he took his 
stand. Near Heidelberg, on the other side and down the 
Rhine, lay an imperial and allied camp of ten thousand men 
under the duke of Lorraine and Marshal Caprara, and rein- 
forcements from Franconia were on the way to join them 
under General Bournonville. 

At the beginning of summer Caprara showed signs of open- 
ing operations, and the French commander decided to strike 
the imperial officer before his reinforcements should arrive. 
He had some fear that Alsatia might be attacked from the 
Moselle region, but he provided against this by a detachment 



608 ATTACKS HIS ENEMY. 

of cavalry on the Saar ; and with nine thousand five hundred 
men he crossed the Rhine on June 14 at Philipsburg, where 
he built a bridge ; and having drawn in a few thousand foot 
and horse, with six guns, from this fortress, as a vanguard, he 
moved towards Heidelberg by the straight road, to seek the 
enemy. At Hockenheim he ascertained that Caprara and the 
duke of Lorraine, having heard of his crossing, had broken 
up to march on Wimpfen, in the hope to forestall the French 
advance into the interior and prevent its arresting the march 
of Bournonville ; and sharply turning to the right on June 
15 to Wiesloch, Turenne headed the imperial generals off. 
On the 16th, finding that the enemy was busy crossing from 
the left to the right bank of the Elsenz, he advanced on him 
and stopped him at Sinsheim. 

Caprara, whose business it was to await reinforcements, 
should have, according to the ideas of that time, and indeed 
of any time, declined battle, as he could well have done by 
moving into a position which Turenne could not attack. But 
though he imagined that he had so done, his calculations 
proved unsound, and Turenne with characteristic boldness 
decided to force battle on him. 

There are various accounts of the strength of the rival 
armies, but on the field they were not far from equal. 
Caprara and the duke had with them seven thousand horse, 
but not exceeding two thousand foot ; and they had taken up 
their stand on a plateau back of Sinsheim, with a steep access 
on all sides, and with the Elsenz like a double ditch in its 
front. They had occupied Sinsheim, an old fortified abbey 
near by, and the edges of the plateau, and deemed themselves 
quite secure. It was indeed a dubious place to attack. South 
of Sinsheim is a plain shut in by hills, and into this plain, 
south of the river, Turenne had debouched and formed line. 

Caprara ought to have held Sinsheim in greater force ; but 



CAPTURES SINSHEIM. 609 

he had placed only one thousand foot and four hundred dra- 
goons in the gardens of the town, the town itself, the abbey 
and along the bank of the river, and had not sustained them 
by artillery. As Turenne had no excess of force, — five 
thousand foot and four thousand horse, — the task was a seri- 
ous one to face. The imperialists had had a long rest and the 
troops were fresh, while the French had marched about ninety 
miles in four days and were tired and footsore. But Turenne 
wished to strike the enemy before he was reinforced, so as to 
open the campaign by a gain in moral force ; and he decided 
on battle. There was, according to our ideas, an excellent 
chance of an attack on the enemy's right flank by a circuit 
around Sinsheim and up the Heidelberg road, but this was 
not within the ideas of the day. Parallel front attacks were 
universal. Despite their long march the spirit of the men 
was good, and with his usual confidence Turenne moved to 
the attack, meanwhile using his six guns to open his way. 

In front of Sinsheim were gardens and hedges proper for 
defense, and though near the river were a number of low 
marshy places, it was fordable. Turenne detached a force of 
thirteen hundred foot and four squadrons of dragoons to attack 
the town. The troops went at their work cheerily, and in an 
hour had forced the river, driven the enemy out of the gar- 
dens and back into Sinsheim, and had reached the town ditch. 
Here was met a sharp fire, but the French waded the ditch, 
planted their ladders, and after another hour and a half 
forced an entrance, though the place was well defended, and 
had its streets barricaded with wine-barrels filled with earth 
and heavy beams from the houses. The abbey offered no 
defense whatever ; its garrison fled, and reinforcements 
sent to it came too late. In Sinsheim Caprara forfeited a 
large part of his infantry force, — four hundred men being- 
taken prisoners. 



610 



FORCES A STRONG POSITION. 



Having captured Sinsheim and driven the enemy away 
from the river, Turenne, not to allow him to recover from his 
surprise, turned quickly on his main force. 

The plateau on which stood the imperialists was an im- 
mense triangle, at whose apex, near Sinsheim, was a ravine, 
up which Turenne must work his way in order to debouch 
in the open ; and at the top there was but narrow space to 



t f Y'-'j tii.ii'»M» r v« / *"V M '' "j 




TUHtWNES FIFIST L. 



Battle of Sinsheim, 



deploy his men. On each side of the defile lay steeps, cov- 
ered on the right by orchards and vineyards, on the left by 
a long quickset hedge, and everywhere practicable for un- 
mounted men only. Marshaling his foot in the two wings so 
as by occupying the hedge and a walled vineyard to be able 
to drive out the enemy's light troops, still on the edge of the 
plateau, and placing his cavalry in the centre, he advanced. 
This was an intelligent formation, though a decided innova- 
tion on the rules of the day for battle-order; but Turenne 



WINS A VICTORY. 611 

was, if anything, original. In this order the French vigor- 
ously advanced up the heights, and, as they debouched, the 
lines were formed with platoons of foot interspersed with the 
squadrons in the fashion of Gustavus. The guns were got 
up with the cavalry. Instead of disputing the possession of the 
ravine, the enemy had drawn up his cavalry well back on the 
plateau to keep away from Turenne's artillery fire, Caprara 
in the second line, the duke of Lorraine in the first; and 
this enabled the French the more easily to make their way 
up the slopes, and gave them more chance to deploy. 

Turenne's bold advance on the enemy, rarely paralleled in 
those slow and unenterprising days, met with its well-deserved 
success. The foot, which had to climb up the rough, steep 
hillside, so as to leave the ravine for the cavalry, no sooner 
reached the level than it fell smartly on the imperial troops, 
which defended the edge of the plateau, and after a stout 
tussle, drove them in. Turenne had meanwhile been getting 
the cavalry forward into line, and, as it moved onward, its 
front was widened by additional squadrons on right and 
left. The French horse already in line vigorously charged 
home on the allied centre, but the right having gone ahead 
with too much ardor, Lorraine met it with a counter charge 
and drove it back. In following it up, however, he came on 
the French battalions, which met him with so hot a fire that 
he recoiled, and Turenne's horse again formed. When fully 
deployed, the first line was composed of cavalry with foot on 
either flank ; and the second line of foot with horse on its 
flanks ; while a mixed line of horse and foot stood in reserve. 
The field was covered with dust so thick as to quite hide the 
operations, but the lines fought stubbornly, and flags were 
taken and retaken again and again. Turenne, as always, was 
in the h$at of the fray : with a few squadrons he was for an 
hour in the midst of the enemy's cuirassiers ; after a struggle 



612 UTILITY OF THE OPERATION. 

which reflected credit on both sides, French fervor prevailed, 
and with much pushing to and fro, but without loss of cour- 
age or ground, the French drove the enemy from the field. 
The battle had lasted seven hours, much time having been 
consumed in preliminaries. Caprara and Lorraine retired 
very much broken, but not so well pursued as they might 
have been, by a circuit through the woods to Heilbronn, 
whence they returned, back of the Neckar, to Heidelberg. 

The victory was complete ; the French loss was thirteen 
hundred killed ; the imperial loss two thousand men killed 
and six hundred prisoners. But even Turenne did not know 
how to utilize the gain. He retired June 20 — possibly by 
orders from the Court — across the Rhine at Philipsburg 
and took post at Lachen near Neustadt, content with the pun- 
ishment he had given the duke and Caprara. He shortly 
strengthened his force up to sixteen thousand men. 

There was no more gallantry in Turenne's attack on Sin- 
sheim than in Conde's at Senef ; but the former battle, asso- 
ciated with its entire operation, strikes us more favorably 
than the latter. Though the numbers engaged were less, the 
work was done in a broader style. 

In a certain sense, in this raid, for it was little more, the 
gain was hardly worth the loss. We are not given Turenne's 
ideas with reference to it ; and the old military writers devote 
much time to the description of battles, while rarely giving 
reasons for a captain's larger operations. A battle is the 
cutting of the knot ; though it appeals to our sympathies, it 
is important mainly in its results ; whereas the reason for 
this or that strategic manoeuvre is of vastly greater moment. 
But we are rarely permitted to know what most interests us, 
— the impelling causes to any given manoeuvre or battle. 
It is left to the military critic to guess these if he can ; they 
alone elucidate the grand operations. 



ONLY A RAID. 



613 



The province of war is not to kill. Killing is but an inci- 
dent, and an unfortunate one, of war. To inflict a loss on 
the enemy unless such a loss accomplishes some end — as to 
put the enemy out of capacity to do harm for a season, and 
thus enable you to manoeuvre to advantage — is no gain. To 
have a clearly defined purpose for a battle, or to utilize a 
victory properly, was, until the days of Frederick, almost an 
unknown thing. Gustavus was an exception ; so, frequently, 
was Turenne, but not here, unless it can be claimed that the 
defeat at Sinsheim forestalled the allies in an invasion of 
Alsatia, of which there was no immediate probability. Tu- 
renne had struck the enemy before their junction with 
Bournonville, and had to a certain extent neutralized them ; 
but this was all. 




French Musketeer. 
(End of 17th Century.) 



XLIX. 

ENTZHEIM, OCTOBER 4, 1674. TURKHEIM, JANUARY 5, 

1675. 

Shortly after Sinsheim, to forestall an invasion of Alsatia, Turenne again 
crossed the Rhine, advanced on the enemy, who lay back of the Neckar, and 
drove them towards the Main. Hereupon they crossed the Rhine and marched 
up towards Speyer, where, seeing no chance to operate advantageously, they 
recrossed, managed to reach Strasburg, and again entering Alsatia, took up a 
position at Entzheim. Here, October 4, Turenne attacked them. The enemy 
had over thirty-five thousand men; Turenne had but twenty-two thousand; 
but he put his men to good use, and fell with some effect on their left wing, 
so as to crowd them towards the Rhine. Though hotly contested, the battle 
was drawn and both armies retired ; but the enemy vacated the field, while 
Turenne held it with a small force. The enemy was now joined by the elector 
of Brandenburg, which gave them fifty-seven thousand men, with which they 
went into winter-quarters. To crowd them out of Alsatia, Turenne made 
a winter march back of the Vosges Mountains, and debouching on their left 
flank, forced them towards the Rhine. Then, following them up, he attacked 
them near Colmar January 5. By turning their left flank at Turkheim, he 
managed to drive them from the field ; and owing to disagreement among the 
commanders, the allies retired definitely across the Rhine. This campaign 
had been vastly to Turenne's credit. 

Shortly after his return to the left bank of the Rhine 
after the battle of Sinsheim, Turenne learned that the allies, 
largely reinforced, had taken position between Mannheim and 
Ladensburg, north of the Neckar and near its mouth. Bour- 
nonville had joined, and the forces, to which the Worms gar- 
rison was added, had grown to five thousand foot and nine 
thousand horse. To check the enemy in any attempt they 
might be about to make on Alsatia, the French captain deter- 
mined on dealing them a fresh blow. 



TURENNE CROSSES THE RHINE. 615 

Having strengthened Zabern so that he would have a 
secure point d'appui in Alsatia, Turenne gathered his forces 
near Neustadt, and giving out that he would shortly move on 
the Saar, he headed his van of five hundred cavalry on 
Kaiserslautern July 3, while the main army marched towards 
Philipsburg. 

He again crossed the Rhine at that place, from which he 
took four battalions, six guns and twenty copper pontoons, 
and marched via Hockenheim to the Neckar at Wieblingen, 
where the enemy's officers came down to reconnoitre. The 
river was fordable, but Turenne, who was always careful of 
his men when without detriment he could be so, built a pon- 
toon bridge, after driving away the enemy's cavalry with his 
guns, and sending over some squadrons to hold the further 
bank, he crossed. His purpose was to turn the enemy out of 
their position. Having passed the river, he demonstrated 
towards Ladensburg, while the enemy made small resistance 
and retired summarily on Frankfort, via Zwingenberg and 
Darmstadt, reaching Langen the same day. Turenne fol- 
lowed, but got no further than Zwingenberg. Here he saw 
that he could not prevent them from reaching Frankfort, gave 
over the pursuit, and deeming it essential to keep his eye on 
the Moselle region, from which there was danger, he retired 
and took up a position at Weinheim and Gross-Saxen. The 
enemy withdrew beyond the Main, having suffered the loss of 
a large number of prisoners and a yet greater moral deple- 
tion. They expected further reinforcements, and Turenne 
believed they would then seek to carry the war into Alsatia ; 
to watch which purpose he determined to remain awhile on 
the right bank. In order to spare his own magazines at 
Philipsburg, Hagenau, Germersheim, Landau and Neustadt, 
and in accordance with orders to prevent the allies from 
again establishing themselves in the Lower Palatinate, or in 



616 DEVASTATING THE PALATINATE. 

the region between the Main and the Neckar, and thus be a 
threat to Alsatia, he devastated the entire region, destroying 
everything he could not carry off. Done under explicit 
instructions from the French government, barbarous as it 
was, this work was thoroughly done. Such vandalism was the 
order of the clay ; it cannot well be laid at Turenne's door. A 
generation later, Marlborough devastated Bavaria ; and have 
we not the work of Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley to 
regret ? 

The allies, as Turenne had feared, now threatened Alsatia 
from the Moselle region ; and at the end of July the French 
army was transferred to the left bank and was established 
near Neustadt, and later in the Landau region, where Turenne 
remained a month, closely watching the enemy by means of 
parties scouting on both sides of the Ehine. By sundry rein- 
forcements Turenne managed to raise his army to twenty 
thousand men. The details of the minor operations at this 
period are extremely interesting to the student, but from lack 
of space cannot be given. Having received large accessions 
from Germany and Lorraine, with thirty-five thousand men 
the allies crossed the Rhine at Mainz, the last days of August, 
and marched slowly on Speyer, which they reached Septem- 
ber 6. The commanding because senior officer, Bournonville, 
could not agree with his subordinates; and not liking the 
task of attacking Turenne's lines near Landau, for Philips- 
burg was on their flank, and being hard up for victual, the 
allies recrossed the Rhine above Speyer, September 21, on 
three bridges which they threw, and camped at Lusheim and 
later at Wiesenthal, north and south of Philipsburg. Antici- 
pating that the enemy was aiming to control Strasburg, 
Turenne sent a detachment out from Philipsburg to hold the 
road to that place at Graben, and to head off approaches by 
the enemy ; and dispatched a considerable body under Gen- 



THE ENEMY ENTERS ALSATIA. 617 

eral Vaubrun to seize the bridge-head fort on the west bank of 
the Rhine at Strasburg ; but the latter officer negotiated in 
lieu of acting, the former detachment came too late, and on 
September 24 Caprara, who had meanwhile marched up river 
and acted with commendable vigor, seized the Strasburg 
bridge-head himself. This was unfortunate, for Strasburg, 
which was considered to be neutral, opened the gate of upper 
Alsatia. 

That Alsatia was the allies' objective Turenne now clearly 
saw ; he had already headed up river, and by September 29 
he placed his entire army in a position behind the small 
stream Siiffel, just north of Strasburg, with his right flank on 
a morass, his left on the 111, and Wantzenau in his rear. The 
allies were slower, but their main army again crossed, the 
end of September, and took up a position near Strasburg, 
behind the Brusch, in the villages of Entzheim, Geispoltz- 
heim and Blesheim, where they could await reinforcements 
while holding part of upper Alsatia. But they lay too far 
back of the Brusch to make this stream serve as a defense. 
This period is full of interesting and skillful mancBuvres ; and 
Turenne deserves credit for rarely failing to divine the ene- 
my's purpose. If one were to write a manual which should 
cover all the operations of war, minor and major, illustrations, 
and apt ones, could be taken for every principle from the 
life of Turenne alone. 

Louvois was for holding Turenne to task for allowing the 
allies to enter Alsatia, despite his fine work against great odds 
in defense of the province ; and wanted him to retire at once 
to Lorraine, lest the enemy should march into the interior ; 
but Turenne obtained from the king permission to act as he 
deemed best, and to remain in Alsatia, for here alone could 
he prevent the enemy from invading France. His letter to 
the king is reasonable, strong, — much like the man : — 



618 A NOTEWORTHY LETTER. 

" Les ennemis, quelque grand nornbre de troupes qu'ils ayent, ne sau- 
raient dans la saison ou nous sommes penser a aucune autre enterprise 
qu'a celle de me faire sortir de la province ou je suis, n'ayant ni vivres ni 
nioyens pour passer en Lorraine que je ne sois chasse" de 1' Alsace: si je 
m'en allais de moi-menie, comme V. M. me l'ordonne, je ferais ce qu'ils 
auront peut-etre de la peine a me faire faire; quand on a un nombre raison- 
able de troupes, on ne quitte pas un pays, encore que l'ennemi en ai beau- 
coup d'avantage; je suis persuade" qu'il vaudrait beaucoup mieux pour 
le service de V. M. que je perdisse une bataille, que d'abaudonner l'Alsace 
et repasser les montagnes; si je le fais, Philipsbourg et Brisac seront 
bientot obliges de se rendre; les imperiaux s'empareront de tout le 
pays depuis Mayence jusqu'a Bale, et transporteront peut-etre la guerre 
d'abord en Francbe Comte - , de Ik en Lorraine, et viendront ravager la 
Champagne; je connois la force des troupes imperiales, les ge'ne'raux qui 
les commandent, le pays ou je suis. Je prend tout sur moi, et je me 
charge des e've'neinents." 

To be able to hold himself, he strengthened his magazines, 
particularly Zabern, and closely watched the enemy. He was 
now placed where a battle won would drive the enemy out of 
Alsatia ; while from a battle lost he believed he could retire 
under the guns of Zabern ; lest the allies should become too 
strong when the elector should have joined them with his 
twenty thousand men, Turenne determined to strike them 
before that event ; and with this end in view made prepara- 
tions from his camp at Wantzenau to move on them at Entz- 
heim. It required all the self-reliance and enterpi-ise which 
Turenne possessed to face the difficulties of the situation. 
The enemy had twice his force ; they backed on upper Alsa- 
tia, rich in victual, while lower Alsatia had been largely 
stripped by the late operations ; they were placed where an 
invasion of France was easy, and they were awaiting twenty 
thousand fresh men while Turenne could hope for no rein- 
forcements. But to attack was the safest defense, and 
Turenne did not hesitate. 

At nightfall of October 2 Turenne sent dragoon parties 



ADVANCE ON THE ALLIES. 



619 



out to bridge all the streams lie must cross to reach the Briisch, 

— the Rhine-Ill region is a perfect network of marsh streams, 

— and at midnight the whole army followed to Achenheim, 
crossing the Siiffel at Lampertheim, and advancing in three 
columns : the cavalry on the left, the foot in the centre, the 
artillery and baggage on the right. A steady rain made the 
roads extremely heavy, and the advance was slow. It was 
not the habit of the day to keep outposts at any great 
distance ; the enemy 

had none out beyond 
a mile from Entz- 
heim, and the move- 
ments of the French 
army were not dis- 
covered. Reaching 
Achenheim in the 
afternoon of the 3d, 
Turenne reconnoitred 
carefully, and pushed 
forward his van of 
dragoons to Holz- 
heim ; during the 
following night the 
entire army followed, 

and after crossing took up a position beyond the Briisch, with 
its right leaning on Holzheim. The army had worked hard 
to get at the enemy. 

Before it stretched a triangular plain three or four miles 
long, in the middle of which the enemy had drawn up when 
they heard of Turenne's advance, with the centre behind Entz- 
heim, held in force by foot and guns ; while the left, thrown 
forward, reached out towards the Briisch and the right towards 
the Erger, a small stream across which they had their bridges 




Entzheim Operation. 



620 



THE ARMIES IN LINE. 



and line of retreat to Strasburg. Small ravines bordered by 
hedges cut up the plain ; one of especially large size lay in 
front of the left like an intrenchment ; and near Entzheim 
were patches of woods, hedges and gardens. 

The morning of October 4 opened foggy, and shortly rain 
began to fall. The enemy, already aware of Turenne's 
advance, now discovered the immediate presence of the 
French. Turenne, cheerful and bright in word and deed, as 




OEISPOl-OESHDM 



Battle of Entzheim. 



he always was on the day of battle, himself led forward his 
lines. He had twenty battalions of about six hundred men 
each, and eighty-five squadrons of one hundred and twenty 
men, in all a force of about twenty-two thousand. His order 
of battle was the common one: ten battalions in the first 
line, eight in the second and two in reserve, with six squad- 
rons in reserve and five between the lines. The cavalry and 
dragoons were on the flanks, and in the first line little bodies 
of fifteen musketeers stood between each two squadrons. 
Thirty guns were placed in front of the wings and centre. 



FIGHTING ON THE RIGHT. 621 

The enemy had twenty-seven battalions, averaging six hun- 
dred and seventy men, and one hundred and twenty-three 
squadrons, numbering, including dragoons and cavalry, nine- 
teen thousand men ; total, thirty-eight thousand. Some 
French records only allot them thirty-five thousand men ; but 
they had fifty guns. They stood in two lines and a reserve ; 
and, according to some accounts, were in six bodies, with 
more or less open intervals between them. The line had a 
reentering angle at Entzheim ; and the left wing had in its 
front a wood which was about three quarters of a mile long 
by nearly half a mile wide, called in the various accounts 
of the battle the " little wood ; " while on the right extended 
a much larger one called the " big wood." In front of the 
right was an extensive patch of vineyards and hedges. It was 
a good position for the defensive battle on which the allies 
had determined. Caprara commanded the right ; the duke 
of Holstein the left ; Bournonville stood with the corps de 
bataille in the centre. The duke of Lorraine, the duke of 
Baden and some other German princes commanded their 
own forces. Bournonville had occupied the little wood with 
foot, and had thrown up two lines of works in it, on which 
some guns were mounted. 

Turenne opened the attack by a cannonade all along the 
line, which was well sustained throughout the day. It seems 
as if he might have turned the little wood, and taken the 
force there in reverse ; he did not do so, but pushed a force 
of dragoons under Boufflers directly into the wood, hoping 
to take it and fall on the enemy's left. This attack was 
promptly met at the first line of works, and Boufflers recoiled. 
Turenne sent him some reinforcements, and despite addi- 
tional troops put in by the enemy, Boufflers carried the first 
line and captured the guns. He was, however, stopped at the 
second line of works, and here for three hours the fight was 



622 FIGHTING ON THE LEFT. 

kept up, hot and bloody. Turenne again and again sent rein- 
forcements to Boufflers, and the enemy did the like to their 
divisions. Not until the French had been thrice forced out 
was the wood definitely taken and the enemy driven to shel- 
ter behind the ravine in their rear. It was at this point that 
the English contingent fought, in which the later great duke 
of Marlborough commanded a regiment. 

The attention of Turenne had been so constantly taken up 
with the fierce fighting at the little wood that there had been 
no set attempt to manoeuvre the centre or left of the French 
army ; it was probably not intended that there should be 
more than a partial attack here, for his plan manifestly was 
to crush their left and throw them back towards the fron- 
tier; and there is some doubt whether the French or the 
allies first advanced. But Bournonville initiated an onset 
with a heavy column of cavalry cVelite on the centre of the 
French line, advancing on the left of the vineyards, while 
Caprara was sent out with another column on the right of the 
vineyards to fall on the left flank of the French, and take 
the infantry centre in reverse. 

On the French left stood the cavalry of Counts d'Auvergne 
and de l'Orges. These officers had advanced, or were prepar- 
ing to advance, towards the big wood on the enemy's right, 
and the movement was to be followed by General Foucault 
and seven battalions of foot from the centre ; but the French 
had scarcely started when they became aware of the column 
of eighteen squadrons which, under Caprara in person, was 
about to fall on the French left, and of the advance of Bour- 
nonville. Foreseeing danger from front and rear, General 
Foucault ployed his foot into a square — " fit face des deux 
cotes " — and awaited attack, ordering the men to reserve 
their fire ; but when Bournonville perceived the firm front of 
the French corps de bataille, he declined to deliver the blow, 



NO DEFINITE RESULT. 623 

and rode back whence he came. Caprara, on the other hand, 
boldly rode around the French flank, and by the violence of 
his onset came close to breaking it up, but d'Auvergne and 
de l'Orges returned to the line, faced to the left, took Caprara 
himself in reverse, and hustled him back. 

The fighting at the little wood had ceased; not so the 
fighting on the French right. The enemy, unwilling to give 
up their point, now sent out a heavy force of foot under the 
duke of Luneburg to retake it ; but Turenne, determined to 
win success at this part of the line, called for reinforcements. 
He met Liineburg's advance with the bulk of the first line 
of the right wing, the second moving up into its place ; and 
after another period of heavy fighting, in which the enemy 
and the French were each driven back four times, and four 
times again came to the charge, Turenne pushed Luneburg 
well back into Entzheim. The work here was so hot that 
the French left was now instructed to remain on the defen- 
sive ; but it kept up a heavy cannonading meanwhile. The 
battle on the right flank had been hotly contested ; but, 
though it had lasted all day, it had led to nothing definite. 

Turenne's willingness to attack shows a keen knowledge 
of the weakness of the enemy's army, which, though numer- 
ous, was made up of so many different parts as to lack cohe- 
sion. It has been suggested that his proper tactics on this 
field was to attack the allied right, which was easier of 
access, and if once demolished would enable him to cut them 
off from Strasburg. Their fear for this flank would prob- 
ably have given him a better chance of driving them off the 
field, if he could give them a sufficiently hearty blow at this 
point ; and it was feasible, as their main infantry force was 
massed near Entzheim. But Turenne's plan seems to have 
been to break the enemy's left, lead to the capture of Entz- 
heim, which would thus be taken in reverse, and throw the 



624 A DRAWN BATTLE. 

enemy back on his line of retreat and across the Rhine. 
This was indeed more in accordance with the ideas of the 
day, which did not look favorably upon a battle which would 
drive the enemy, especially a superior one, into a corner 
where they must absolutely fight. It was deemed too dan- 
gerous an experiment ; and here the French were outnum- 
bered two to one. In his effort to accomplish his design, 
Turenne ran the risk of so depleting his centre and left that, 
had the allies stoutly pushed home in these quarters, Turenne 
must, with his smaller force, have suffered a galling defeat. 
But the allies fought feebly, and only defended themselves 
from Turenne's attack ; they had not the enterprise to push 
in with any vigor. 

The French had been marching and working hard for the 
two preceding nights and days, in the rain without camping ; 
all had been on a plain deep in mud, under heavy fire, and 
half the army had been fighting desperately all day. They 
were exhausted, and Turenne clearly saw that he could not 
carry out his plan against the heavy odds of the enemy. He 
determined to retire to his camp. Under a cannonade which 
lasted well on into the night, and leaving a brigade of cav- 
alry to hold the field as an assertion of victory, Turenne 
moved his army back to Achenheim. 

Neither side could fairly claim the victory, for the allies at 
the same time withdrew to their old camp at Illkirch, having 
lost three thousand killed, three thousand wounded, eight 
guns and twenty standards. The French loss was two thou- 
sand killed and fifteen hundred wounded, with several colors. 
Why the French loss should be the smaller does not appear 
from the course of the fighting ; but these are the figures 
usually accepted as correct. Turenne had a horse shot under 
him, and the loss in officers was heavy. The allies remained 
near Strasburg, and Turenne placed himself at Marlenheim, 



THE ALLIES RETIRE. 625 

in advance of Zabern, where he protected his magazines at 
this place and Hagenau, to recuperate and prepare for a fresh 
blow. 

The battle had consisted solely of an isolated attack pushed 
home on the left of an enemy who fought on the defensive, 
and of a second attempted attack on his right, met half way. 
Much discussion, coupled with the usual critic's " if, " has 
been had on this battle ; but it was so far a gain to the 
French as it prevented the allies from making any effort to 
penetrate into France. For this accomplishment Turenne 
deserves high credit, as he clearly does for his splendid cour- 
age in attacking such superior forces. With reference to 
Turenne's withdrawal from the field, Napoleon says : " II 
a pousse dans cette occasion la circonspection jusqu'a la 
timidite ; il savait mieux que qui que ce soit l'influence de 
l'opinion a la guerre." At all events, Turenne had made a 
handsome bid to drive the allies out of Alsatia ; and if he 
had not fully succeeded on this field, he shortly would on 
another. ' 

The elector of Brandenburg finally joined the allies on the 
14th of October at Strasburg, making a total force of thirty- 
three thousand foot and twenty-four thousand horse. To 
meet this serious threat, the arriere-ban of France was ordered 
out and a number of regiments brought back from Flanders. 
Despite their strength, the allies were slow and inactive, 
though they indulged in much manoeuvring, ostensibly with a 
view of attacking Turenne's depots at Zabern and Hage- 
nau ; but eventually making no progress, for Turenne headed 
them off at every point, meeting them by concentrating and 
ably posting his forces behind the Zorn, at Detweiler, they 
returned to the vicinity of their old camps, and later went 
into winter-quarters, the elector establishing his court in 
Colmar. Turenne then put his men in quarters behind the 



626 A WINTER CAMPAIGN. 

Moder, having strengthened Hagenau and Zabern, and cut all 
the bridges leading north from the Strasburg region. 

The explanation of the allies' laxness lay in the jealousy of 
the several leaders and the entire want of unity in their pro- 
ceedings. By utilizing his knowledge of this fact, Turenne, 
who lay near his magazines watching the enemy, and had 
been also reinforced by a few thousand men, conceived the 
idea that, after the beginning he had made, with some further 
skillful feints, he might push the allies back on Strasburg 
and perhaps crowd them out of the country. They mani- 
festly desired to winter in Alsatia, not only because it saved 
their own supplies by consuming the enemy's, but because 
it gave them a starting-point for the invasion of France the 
succeeding spring. Both Tranche Comte and Lorraine were 
ready to welcome them, and this serious threat to France 
Turenne determined to undermine. With a view to so doing, 
and against the rule of the day, which was to go into winter- 
quarters early, Turenne obtained permission from the king to 
conduct a winter campaign. The allies had so heavily in- 
trenched their position that there was no chance for a front 
attack, and both armies extended from the Vosges to the 
Rhine, so that there was no means of reaching either flank. 

In order to mislead the enemy as to his intentions, Turenne 
put his own forces into winter-quarters between his maga- 
zines at Zabern and Hagenau, both of which he had strongly 
fortified and garrisoned, and gave out that he had done with 
operations for the year. He needed patience as well as activ- 
ity, for victual and forage were both hard to get. The allies 
were so thoroughly deceived as to spread their own troops 
over a wide territory backing on the Rhine between Belf ort 
and Benfelden. 

On November 29 Turenne started with fifteen thousand 
foot and thirteen thousand horse, and via Liitzelstein and 



A MOUNTAIN MARCH. 



627 



Lixheim, which he left December 4, he led his men across the 
Vosges mountain paths, and along their west slope through 
Lorcheim, Blamont, Baccarat and Padoulx to Remiremont. 
The march was admirably planned ; each column was given 
its daily route, and the rendezvous was at Belfort ; but no one 




Tiirkheim Operation. 

except Turenne knew its purpose. He may have hoped to 
surprise the allies, but they were not inactive, and got wind 
of the manoeuvre while Turenne was waiting at Remiremont 
for his infantry column, belated by snow and bad roads, to 
come up, as well as to collect victual. To lead the allies to 
believe that he might debouch on them through some of the 
mountain gaps, as well as to prevent their using the gaps 



628 NOT A SURPRISE. 

themselves, Turenne sent several detachments due east across 
the range to move to and fro on the eastern slope. These 
indulged in a number of exchanges with the enemy, while 
with his main force Turenne marched still further south. 

His journey had been as fast as could be, and yet slow ; 
it was December 27 before he reached Belfort. As he had 
hoped that his movements would act on the enemy in the 
nature of a surprise, this march of less than five miles 
a day seems unnecessarily protracted ; only by remembering 
Virginia roads during our civil war can we account for 
it ; in Turenne's time, the roads in France were not what 
they are to-day. Still Turenne was right in his calculations ; 
for though the allies knew of the presence of a French force 
at Remiremont, they appear to have been taken unawares 
when the whole army appeared in rear of their left flank at 
Belfort. Here, unfortunately, Turenne had again to remain 
to collect victual, a delay which robbed his movement of a 
great part of its effect : instead of being able summarily to 
attack the enemy, he was compelled to resort to small manoeu- 
vres. The march had been exhausting; his column was 
much strung out ; he could barely feed his men ; and though 
he had come so far to get in a blow before the enemy could 
concentrate, he was unable to undertake a smart and immedi- 
ate attack. 

Having ascertained through prisoners that the allied left 
wing was under orders in case of attack to rendezvous, part 
at Altkirch and part at Colmar, Turenne sought to separate 
these two detachments by pushing in between them, and 
marched on Miihlhausen ; but he was able to take with him 
only three thousand cavalry, while a small body of foot was 
ordered to follow as speedily as possible. The allies, aston- 
ished at his appearance, yet anticipated his manoeuvre ; they 
set out at once, and their van reached Miihlhausen first. 



TURENNE MOVES ON THE ENEMY. 629 

Though with a force so small as to be merely a reconnoi- 
tring party, Turenne attacked the enemy near Miihlhausen, 
but without advantage other than to gain a handsome victory 
and some information. The loss of the allies was three hun- 
dred men. Turenne returned towards his main force; he 
was yet again compelled to victual, get his troops together 
and rest them. The intelligent conception of this operation 
was quite ahead of the means of carrying it out. Everything 
was cumbrous in those days ; and in winter, especially in a 
sparsely settled mountain country, it was impossible to march 
fast and suitably ration a column. Neither had the country 
supplies, nor could a train be carried along at any reasonable 
pace. 

On January 2 the army was advanced to Ensisheim, on 
the 4th to Pfaffenheim, marching near the hills to avoid 
Colmar, and because the valley roads were impassable. 
Pushing on towards Colmar on January 5, Turenne found 
the main force of the allies in line of battle, behind a branch 
of the Fechte called the Logelbach, and covered by a number 
of works. Their left leaned on Colmar ; in front was a low 
plain, too much cut up for advantageous manoeuvring; a 
mile beyond their right lay, on the main stream of the 
Fechte, the village of Tiirkheim, which the allies had but 
slightly occupied. The branch in their front had been 
strengthened with works, and the troops stood in two lines 
with a reserve. The French army marched from Pfaffen- 
heim in three columns, and at Eggisheim threw back eight 
squadrons of the enemy which were out reconnoitring. Draw- 
ing up his army of thirty thousand men, of which half was 
foot, in line but beyond artillery range, in order to impose 
on the allies, Turenne with a small force reconnoitred, and at 
once saw that Tiirkheim was the most promising point for 
attack. He proposed to try the same tactics which had 



630 



CLEVER DISPOSITIONS. 



half succeeded at Entzheim : turn the flank furthest from 
their line of communications, and by pushing boldly in, facil- 
itate their exit from French soil. In pursuance of this 
design, while the army filed into line, the two first lines stood 
ready to engage the enemy, and were instructed to feel him, 
but not so strongly as to bring on an engagement, while the 
third column marched over roads supposed to be impassable, 



» j.\-vv Nrr 
■^ TUF^HEIMjj 




Battle of Tiirkheim. 



behind vineyards, and then through a mountain gap to the 
Tiirkheim valley, intending to seize the place and thus 
threaten the allied right. Meanwhile, Count de l'Orges, in 
command of the French right wing, demonstrated towards the 
enemy in Colmar to prevent their sending reinforcements to 
Tiirkheim. In this village were two battalions of the enemy, 
which were withdrawn as the French approached. Turenne 
occupied the place, threw a force into a mill which stood on 



FOLLOWED BY VICTORY. 631 

both sides of the stream, and drew up in line behind the 
Fechte, across the allied flank. 

No sooner had the allies perceived Turenne's manoeuvre 
than they undertook to retrieve their error, and sent twelve 
battalions, thirty squadrons and six guns from their second 
line to retake Tiirkheim. There was a sharp fight in and 
near this village, in which General Foucault was killed and 
Turenne had his horse shot under him, and each side lost 
some two hundred killed and wounded ; but the French held 
their ground. Of the main army facing the allies, Turenne's 
left flank leaned on vineyards at Winzenheim, the right on 
a church — often a good rallying-point — half a mile from 
Colmar. While Turenne was thus making sure of Tiirkheim, 
the artillery of the French left wing moved somewhat to the 
left and front, so that the guns might half enfilade the 
enemy's line ; and Turenne was preparing to follow up his 
attack by an advance in force on the enemy's right flank, 
when, toward nightfall, the allies concluded to retire, though 
they had suffered small loss ; and during the next night, Jan- 
uary 5-6, rather than further try the fortunes of battle, they 
left the field. 

The French bivouacked where they fought ; the next day, 
Colmar, with hospitals and magazines, fell to them, and thirty 
squadrons were sent in pursuit of the retiring enemy. The 
allies manifestly had no desire to engage in a winter cam- 
paign ; they made their way to Schlettstadt and shortly to 
Strasburg ; and from here, to get safely away from touch 
of the all too active French commander, they crossed the 
Rhine and went into winter-quarters on the right bank. 
Strasburg was glad to resume its neutrality. 

That Turenne by manoeuvres, without delivering a pitched 
battle, — though he had been quite ready for one, — had thus 
been able to thrust the enemy out of Alsatia was, according 



632 THREE GREAT VICTORIES. 

to the idea of his day, the highest honor. While he was on 
the march, there had been a great outcry in Paris about his 
fetreat into Lorraine and his abandonment of Alsatia to the 
enemy ; but on the completion of the operation, of which he 
had in October given the king an outline, he was applauded 
by all France, indeed even by his enemies. 

Perhaps, judged by the standard of Frederick or Napo- 
leon, this manoeuvre might be criticised in some of its details : 
the slowness of the march, the inability to strike a hearty 
blow so soon as the army debouched from the mountains, the 
letting the enemy escape without a fatal blow. But this is 
hypercriticism. We must judge Turenne by his age and the 
steps he made in advance of it. It was quite outside of rules 
to make a winter campaign : Turenne braved one in a moun- 
tain district. He had no modern railway on which to trans- 
port his rations : he carried or collected his food by whatever 
means he could. The roads were called impassable for an 
army: Turenne nevertheless marched on them, and reached 
his goal in condition for battle. It was deemed hazardous 
to attack a superior enemy : Turenne disregarded numbers. 
And best of all, he succeeded in what he started out to do, — 
to thrust the allies out of Alsatia. Turenne was well ahead of 
his own day ; we can hardly expect his method to equal that 
of later and greater captains ; and it remains true that the 
French had won a magnificent success, thanks solely to him. 

It is generally acknowledged that this was Turenne's best 
campaign, though the following one comes close to disputing 
it that title. Sinsheim, Entzheim and Tiirkheim, three great 
victories in seven months, make a wonderful string of jewels. 




French Carbine. (16th Century.) 



L. 

TURENNE'S LAST CAMPAIGN. 1675. 

Ik 1675 the imperial forces were under Montecuculi, who tried to seize Stras- 
burg. Turenne's duty was to keep him from this city and Alsatia. The cam- 
paign was one strictly of manoeuvres. Montecuculi crossed to the left hank, 
hut could accomplish no result. Returning to the right hank, he began a series 
of able operations to seize on the approaches to Strasburg ; but Turenne met 
him at every point. Failing in his victual, Montecuculi moved close to the 
Rhine, so as to get convoys down the river ; but this source Turenne also cut 
off. The rival armies lay on the Rench, and finally on the same night each 
sought to surprise his opponent, with the result that Montecuculi was compelled 
to withdraw. Following him up, Turenne prepared to attack the imperialists 
at Nieder-Sasbach, when he was killed by a cannon-ball. The French were now 
forced across the Rhine, and the war was carried into Alsatia. Few soldiers 
have left as enviable a reputation as Turenne. After his death the French 
cause retrograded fast. 

The emperor had no cause to be satisfied with the cam- 
paign of 1674. He saw that enormous forces had accom- 
plished nothing ; that divided authority lay at the root of 
their failure, and in 1675 he gave sole command of an army 
of twelve thousand foot and fourteen thousand horse to 
Field - Marshal Montecuculi, who purposed to anticipate 
Turenne by crossing the Rhine at Strasburg, and by pushing 
sharply into lower Alsatia. On the last occasion, two years 
before, when he had matched himself against Turenne, this 
brilliant soldier had shown wonderful capacity to manoeuvre, 
and it was with strong expectation of renewed success that 
the emperor now intrusted the opening campaign to him. 

From the Ulm region Montecuculi marched toward the 
Rhine, and took position near Willstadt, where he rendez- 



634 



AIMING AT STRASBURG. 



KAISELRSLAITTELN 



voused the troops from the Neckar and the upper Rhine. 
The population favored the imperial forces ; there were con- 
siderable magazines still holding over from the last year; 
and Montecuculi's object was to conduct a campaign in Alsa- 
tia. To Turenne's part fell the task of holding head against 
Montecuculi's projected inroad. His forces concentrated at 

Schlettstadt, on the left 
bank above Strasburg, 
and he joined them 
from Paris on May 29. 
Strasburg was the 
main objective of both 
generals, but Turenne 
had the harder task. 
His army was smaller, 
twelve thousand foot 
and ten thousand horse, 
and Strasburg inclined 
to the emperor ; yet, as 
we shall see, Turenne 
succeeded in his object 
of keeping the enemy 
away from the city by 
skillful manoeuvres, in 
a campaign which worthily crowned a typical soldier's life, 
and one which had at that day few equals ; which, judged 
by the state of the art, the condition of the country, the 
quality of the troops and their equipment, and the cumbrous 
artillery, has had few superiors at any day. 

Though he was aiming at Strasburg, as well as the enemy, 
it was Turenne's purpose to cross to the German side of the 
Rhine ; and his original plan was to do so at Philipsburg. 
On the right bank he would be freer to operate, and less 




Theatre of 1675 Campaign. 



MONTECUCULI APPEARS. 



635 



hampered in the defense of Alsatia than by manoeuvres on 
the left bank ; he could better impose on Strasburg and the 
other German neutrals, and he could feed his army on the 




Campaign of 1675. 

(The blocks show the successive positions.) 

enemy's country. He appears this year not to have been 
interfered with by the court. 

It was May when Montecuculi reached Willstadt. Turenne 
moved from Schlettstadt on Strasburg' and threatened it with 
bombardment, in case neutrality was violated or the imperial 
army harbored. To entice him thence, Montecuculi moved 
towards Philipsburg and took measures to besiege it, leaving 



636 MONTECUCULI CROSSES THE RHINE. 

behind at Willstadt a force of six thousand men with orders 
to occupy Strasburg so soon as Turenne's back should be 
turned. Though Montecuculi carried out this scheme with 
consummate skill, and spread rumors that he would lay siege 
to Philipsburg, Turenne, whose judgment in such matters 
was exceptionally keen, saw through his intention and did 
not follow ; but he sent a small body to strengthen the garri- 
son. To enforce his apparent purpose, Montecuculi not only 
opened the siege of Philipsburg, but put a force over the 
Rhine at Speyer, and made signs of an intention to besiege 
Landau, Zabern and Hagenau. Turenne had moved to 
Achenheim, from which place he could dominate Strasburg 
or quickly march to these depots, or to Philipsburg, as 
required. He watched the enemy closely, sending many par- 
ties out to seek news. Conscious of the strength of his mag- 
azine-towns, Turenne took no special notice of Montecuculi's 
threat, but made preparations to bridge the Rhine at Otten- 
heim, twenty miles above Strasburg ; and on May 30 put 
over Vaubrun, with four thousand men, in boats, to protect 
the bridge when thrown. He thought that if the enemy 
really besieged Philipsburg, he would march on Freiburg, 
where Montecuculi had his magazines, and by this threat to 
his commissariat frighten him away. On May 31 another 
body was put over. Turenne was now astride the river, with 
good communications, and ready to act on either side. 

Montecuculi himself crossed with the main army to the left 
bank at Angelhausen above Speyer June 1, as a further 
attempt to draw Turenne away from Strasburg, took up a posi- 
tion south of Mannheim, backing on his bridge, and gave out 
that he would attack the French army. But Turenne was 
not troubled, sent out detachments to Neustadt, Kaiserslau- 
tern and Landau, and notified Metz and Nancy not to fear 
raids if they should occur, as they would be mere demonstra- 



RE CROSSES IT. 637 

tions made for effect. Seeing that none of his operations 
could intimidate or draw Turenne away from Strasburg, 
Montecuculi after but a few days retired to the right bank, 
and camped not far from Philipsburg. Having failed to 
transfer the war to the left bank, he now had his choice 
between forcing battle on Turenne, starving him out, or cap- 
turing his bridges, and to the business of determining which 
was best he now addressed himself. 

Once rid of his adversary on the left bank, Turenne him- 
self crossed the Rhine a't" Ottenheim, June 7 and 8, took 
Willstadt, transformed it into a French depot, captured a 
lot of forage which had been shipped down the Kinzig to 
the enemy, and there took up a position between the Kinzig 
and Schutter, covering Strasburg, which he thus neutralized. 
As Strasburg was approachable only by way of Kehl, which 
lay behind the Kinzig, Turenne's presence at Willstadt suf- 
ficed ; but he later broke the Kinzig bridge at Kehl, which 
made access to the city harder. Turenne's position was one 
which threatened Montecuculi's magazines at Offenburg, and 
the latter, on hearing that the French had crossed, at once 
broke up and marched south, hoping to forestall Turenne at 
Willstadt ; but finding himself . too late, he stopped at Lich- 
tenau. He now had thirty thousand men. Turenne had won 
the first round of this manoeuvring match by permanently 
moving the theatre of operations to the right bank of the 
Rhine : by freeing Alsatia from the hardship of war ; and by 
barring the way to Strasburg. 

The next move of the French marshal was to make an 
attempt on Offenburg and on Oberkirch, both magazines of 
the enemy. The latter place was taken, but the former held 
out, and when Montecuculi marched from Lichtenau to the 
relief of Offenburg, which he reached June 15, Turenne to 
meet him changed his front at Willstadt, and sat down 



638 TOO LONG A FRONT. 

closely to watch his opponent, who, as he was now cut off 
from Strasburg, where he had much breadstuff, made a 
demonstration against Kehl, but accomplished nothing. 
Turenne protected his communications with the left bank by 
heavy detachments at Altheim, six miles below Ottenheim, 
and at the bridge at Ottenheim ; but he kept his headquar- 
ters in Willstadt. 

Still Turenne's position was not secure. His front was 
twenty miles long. To the enemy at Offenburg his bridge at 
Ottenheim was nearer than he was himself, a situation, indeed, 
of which Montecuculi took advantage. Had the imperial 
general moved sharply on Ottenheim, he might have caught 
Turenne in an awkward dilemma; but fortunately for 
Turenne he was too slow. As on June 21 he approached the 
Schutter, the fact that his men were taxed by the heavy 
roads induced him to stop for the night; seeing which 
Turenne changed his position by leaving part of his army at 
Willstadt to protect Strasburg, and by moving his bridge and 
protecting force to Altheim, where all preparations for such 
an operation had been made ; and thither he also transferred 
his headquarters. Montecuculi made preparations for action, 
extending his left as far as Lohr, but preferring not to attack 
the new position, which was strong, he withdrew and again 
camped at Offenburg. 

Now that this threat to his bridge had failed and his line 
was less long, Turenne, who suspected some design on Stras- 
burg, moved to Neumiihl to hold the road to Kehl. Monte- 
cuculi was now nearer the Altheim bridge than Turenne, but 
not caring to duplicate his late operation, he took no advan- 
tage of the fact, and moreover Turenne had made it too strong 
to be lightly assailed. From Offenburg, on June 28, for lack 
of victual and forage, the imperial marshal moved to Urlof- 
fen, leaving three thousand men in Offenburg. To meet this 



ALONG THE RENCH. 639 

manoeuvre, Turenne changed his position in prolongation of 
his left and again stood athwart Montecuculi's road to Stras- 
burg, taking post in front of Botesweyer. 

Montecuculi saw that he had failed in his undertaking to 
get hold of Strasburg with its munitions and food ; and as he 
lay in a poor country, and was forced to move to seek rations, 
he made a rapid flank movement back of the Rench at the 
end of June, reached the Rhine, and took up his stand at 
Scherzheim, with his right leaning on the Rhine, hoping to 
get victual and pontoons by water from Strasburg. Turenne, 
though the country was woody and hard to operate in, fol- 
lowed him on the opposite side of the Rench, placed himself 
at Freistadt, and erecting batteries on the Rhine islands and 
anchoring boats with troops in the current, prevented the use 
of the waterway. He also ordered the Hagenau people to 
post a detachment at Wantzenau on the Rhine, and to stop 
all boats which might try to move down the river. 

The land along the Rench being low and swampy, the 
armies, with only the stream between them, remained quietly 
en face for three weeks, rather than manoeuvre ; want of food, 
it was thought by each, would soon compel the other to with- 
draw. In fact, the unhealthf ul situation, the lack of forage 
in the French and lack of rations in the imperial camp finally 
drove each army to activity. Turenne determined to stretch 
his line up the Rench and turn Montecuculi's left flank, 
meanwhile watching Caprara in Offenburg. While medi- 
tating an attack on Montecuculi, Turenne had been improv- 
ing and fortifying a small foot-road, which had been found 
across the river near Wagshorst, by which he proposed in due 
time to move his army. On getting knowledge of Turenne 's 
first movements, Montecuculi, not anticipating an attack, con- 
cluded that Turenne had spread himself out too much and 
offered a fair chance for a blow ; and he prepared to attack 



640 TURENNE' S LAST ATTACK. 

the position on the Rench in the rear by a portion of the 
Offenburg garrison, while personally with another part of his 
army he should move upon its front. The dispositions were 
these : Caprara with two thousand men was to make an attack 
from Offenburg on the rear at Wagshorst ; the duke of Lor- 
raine was to attack the centre with five thousand men ; a force 
of four thousand was detailed against the front of the intrenched 
ford ; and Montecuculi in person was to move on Freistadt. 
The attack thus planned was actually made at night on July 
23-24, but it quite lacked ensemble and remained without 
result, though delivered on Turenne's depleted lines. The 
ground was difficult in the day-time ; at night it proved 
impracticable. 

When this imperial operation had failed, Turenne, leaving 
a half of his force well intrenched at Freistadt, advanced 
July 25 with the other half of his force over the Rench to 
turn Montecuculi's left and cut him off from Offenburg. He 
had fortified his ford over the Rench on both banks, and had 
established posts to hold communication with the Freistadt 
force. His manoeuvre was a bold one, which exposed each 
half of his army to be overwhelmed by the entire force of the 
enemy ; but Turenne had a way of relying on his knowledge 
of his opponent's character, and moreover he had diligently 
prepared his ground. He would not move his entire force, 
lest he should open the way to Strasburg to the enemy, and 
he believed that a threat on his magazine would compel Mon- 
tecuculi to retire. Nor was he disappointed. The several 
attacks prepared by Montecuculi, as above said, quite failed 
to work together, and Turenne had got no further than Gams- 
horst, when Montecuculi, hearing of his presence there in 
force, concluded that he was to be cut off from Caprara at 
Offenburg, and hurriedly withdrew in the night of July 
25-26 to Nieder Sasbach. Here he stood on the road which 



TURENNE' S DEATH. 641 

preserved his communications and ordered Caprara up to the 
same place. Tnrenne at once drew in the Freistadt half of 
his force and followed to Achern. In this position at Nieder 
Sasbach Montecuculi skillfully drew up his forces, and 
Turenne, proposing to push his opponents to battle, did the 
like. He is said to have felt confident of a victorious issue ; 
but while he was marshaling his forces, and just before mov- 
ing to the attack, he was struck to death by a cannon-ball. 

Operations were suspended. The French generals — de 
l'Orges and Vaubrun — could not agree as to who should 
take command, and summarily withdrew over the Rhine at 
Altheim. Montecuculi followed, defeated them and carried 
the war into Alsatia. However interesting the details of this 
remarkable campaign, space forbids us to give more than its 
salient features. 

In 1676 Conde conducted a campaign against Montecuculi 
in Germany, on the whole successfully. It had no remarka- 
ble details. 

Turenne stood decidedly at the head of the generals of his 
time. He was singular in his ability to correctly gauge his 
opponents and the conditions under which he was called on 
to act. He himself was self-contained, shrewd and enterpris- 
ing, and far above the foolish military prejudices of his day. 
He was willing to conduct operations at any season, and 
decidedly opposed to the devotion of unnecessary time to 
sieges and the parceling out of troops in minor operations. 
Ready to fight whenever he had morally or physically the 
advantage of the enemy, he often engaged against marked 
odds. His tactics was original ; he was the first who in his 
day began flank attacks, and who thoughtfully prepared his 
turning manoeuvres. Unlike Conde, whose most stirring 
work was done in his youth, Turenne grew every year of 
his life, and his last campaigns were by far his best. 



642 A SOLDIER PURE AND SIMPLE. 

Sometimes over careful of his men, Turenne inspired them 
with confidence in the greatest danger, and with energy to 
undertake the most difficult operations. He won their devo- 
tion by his kindness, reasonableness, unflurried temper and 
never-ceasing acts of generosity. Always among his men, his 
keen eye singled out the worthy soldier, and his good nature 
never wearied in rewarding him. On one occasion he noticed 
a lieutenant of dragoons, whose assiduity in his duties had 
quite worn out his horse. Turenne accosted him and, after 
some conversation about his outpost, fell to admiring the 
subaltern's poor steed, and presently suggested a trade with 
his own, — a noble creature, such as he always rode. Alleg- 
ing a liking for the color and the shape of the other's head, 
the marshal of France insisted on the trade, and rode off on 
the lieutenant's horse, leaving his charger behind. Anec- 
dotes such as these abound in the accounts of this great man. 

Turenne was a soldier pure and simple. From early youth 
until his death he was that and only that. Few captains lead 
a life so uniformly devoted to arms. Nearly every one of his 
active years was passed in the field. To judge Turenne's real 
value as a captain we must study the conditions under which 
he worked. He was always hampered by the home govern- 
ment, by the paucity of his troops and by the jealousy of his 
superiors. His work was narrowed far below his capacity. 
In view of what he accomplished under generally unfavora- 
ble conditions, and especially against such opponents as 
the Great Conde and Montecuculi, he must be said to have 
earned the highest rank of all the generals of his day. 

Louis XIV. had so far conducted his war of conquest with 
credit and advantage ; but what occurred in the following- 
years undid much of what had been gained. 

In 1678 and 1679 there was negotiated with each of the 
enemies of France — Holland, Spain, the Empire, Sweden, 



FRENCH ENCROACHMENTS. 643 

Denmark — the peace of Nymwegen. The various cessions 
of territory were complicated, but in general terms Holland 
got back her entire territory. Spain ceded to France Tranche 
Comte, Valenciennes, Cambray, Ypres, Bouchain and other 
towns, in exchange for Charleroi, Oudenarde, Courtray, Ghent 
and other places. The emperor ceded Freiburg, and France 
her right to garrison Philipsburg. The duke of Lorraine 
refused to receive back his duchy on the terms offered. The 
Great Elector was forced to return what he had conquered 
from Sweden. 

This peace, won by his able generals, Turenne and Conde 
at their head, placed Le Grand Monarque at the summit of 
his power. Nothing now sufficed to his boundless ambition, 
and owing to the weakness of the empire he continued his 
territorial thefts under whatever pretext he could invent. 
Saarbriick, Luxemburg, Zweibriicken and even Strasburg 
were seized and annexed to France. Trier and Lorraine fol- 
lowed ; the emperor protested, but allowed the occupation to 
continue. 

Finally, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Louis' 
attempted seizure of the Palatinate and his interference in 
the election of the archbishop of Cologne roused the enemies 
of France, and in 1686 the League of Augsburg was entered 
into by William of Orange, the emperor, the kings of Swe- 
den and Spain and the electors of Saxony, Bavaria and the 
Palatinate ; and this, owing to the French invasion and bar- 
barous devastation of the Palatinate in 1688, culminated, 
in the succeeding year, in the Grand Alliance. The prince 
of Orange had become king of England, and it was he who 
organized this new alliance against France, which was joined 
by the members of the Augsburg League, by Holland, Den- 
mark, Savoy, by some of the smaller German princes and the 
pope. France had grown too powerful to make peace a 



644 



PALATINATE SUCCESSION WAR. 



probability. Louis responded by espousing the cause of the 
exiled James II. The war concerning the succession of the 
Palatinate ensued. All western Europe was arrayed against 
Louis. For nine years war was waged in the Netherlands, 
along the Rhine, in Italy, on the border of Spain, in Ireland 
and at sea. Either the triumph or the destruction of France 
should have followed this widespread warfare. Neither oc- 
curred, owing to the peculiar laxness of the conduct of war 
at that day. In Ireland and at sea the French lost; else- 
where there was a balance of success. But neither side knew 
how to improve its gains. 

In this war, which raged from 1689 to 1697, there were a 
number of splendid French victories to which we shall return, 
meanwhile turning aside to a brilliant feat of arms, upon 
which that radiance is shed which always illumines the saving 
of a Christian state from the dominion of the pagan. 




Mounted Arquebusier. (16th Century.) 



LI. 

THE SIEGE OF VIENNA. 1683. 

The emperor had always been at war with the Turks, and harassed by 
insurrections in Hungary. In 1682 both again occurred, and in 1683 the 
Turks marched on Vienna and laid siege to it. The emperor fled. Count 
Stahremberg defended the city, while Charles of Lorraine with a small force 
kept open the routes by which an army of relief might come. The Germans 
sent several divisions, and John SobiesM, king of Poland, marched to Vienna 
with twenty-six thousand men. The grand vizier, Kara Mustapha, had been 
slow in his siege, and the defense of Stahremberg had been stubborn to the 
last degree. Finally, after over two months' siege, when the garrison and 
citizens were at the end of their powers and almost starved, the army of 
relief came up ; Sobieski and Lorraine attacked the enemy and defeated 
them in a hard-fought battle at the very gates of the capital. The Turks 
summarily retired, and were, during the following months, quite pushed out 
of the land. 

Except that the heroic defense of Vienna by Stahremberg 
and its relief by John Sobieski and Charles of Lorraine was 
one of the notable feats of arms of the seventeenth century, 
it should scarce find a place in these pages, for there is no 
special lesson to be learned from it, nor was any one of the 
actors in the splendid drama a captain of the greatest note. 
It was, however, in this siege that Prince Eugene, who has 
done so much for the art of war, played one of his earliest, 
though a modest role, at the age of twenty. 

In 1661 a war broke out between the emperor and the 
Turks, to which an end was put in the splendid victory of 
St. Gothard by Montecuculi. In 1682 a second war broke 
out, fostered openly by the Hungarians and secretly by the 
French. In 1683 the Turks invaded Hungary and laid siege 



646 



THE TURKS THREATEN VIENNA. 



to Vienna. Their army, two hundred thousand strong, was 
under command of Kara Mustapha, grand vizier, to whom 
was intrusted the old green eagle-standard of the Prophet as 
a badge of success ; and on May 12 this force left Belgrade on 
its march to Vienna. Aware of its destination, the emperor, 
Leopold I., called on the princes of the empire for assist- 
ance, and made a treaty with John Sobieski, king of Poland, 



4 ,.t.(.l'<A'f< 




Vienna-Ofen Country. 



i" *)% '-St 

tflA-U.*-" tfl*r PE.VTH 



to come to his aid with forty thousand men, the emperor 
promising sixty thousand men to join him. The imperial 
army was mustered in May at Presburg under Charles of 
Lorraine, a soldier tried in the school of adversity, robbed of 
his inheritance by the French, and a connection and devoted 
servant of the emperor. It numbered thirty-three thousand 



VIENNA DEFENSELESS. 



647 



men, and with this handful Charles was holden to defend the 
land, and to garrison Presbm*g, Raab and Comorn. 

The Turks were already near Ofen, and on June 25 
Charles intrenched himself in a camp between the Raab and 
the Rabnitz, while Esterhazy held the line of the Waag, and 
a Polish force lay at Trentschin. 

The grand vizier had been counseled by Count Tbkoly, the 
Hungarian insurgent, and some of his own 
wise lieutenants not to march on Vienna, 
but Kara Mustapha heeded not, and pushed 
his van of horse out past the Neusiedler 
Lake and to the line of the Leitha, leav- 
ing Raab, Comorn and Leopoldstadt on 
his flank. Charles sent his foot back to 
Vienna, and with his horse retired to Haim- 
burg. The Turkish van attacked him July 
7, and gave his cavalry a hard blow. Vi- 
enna was in a panic, and the emperor left it 
next day for Linz. Count Stahremberg 
was given command of the abandoned city, 
from which a stampede of all the population able to leave 
soon followed, to the number of sixty thousand souls. 

The defenses of Vienna were wretched ; the counterscarp 
was only partly palisaded ; gabions were wanting, barely ten 
guns were mounted in the bastions, and the ditch was dry in 
many places. The entire garrison consisted of the common 
city guard and scarce one thousand troops of the line. On 
July 9, however, Charles came up with his eleven thousand 
horse, followed by some twelve thousand foot, — what was left 
after taking out garrisons. Stahremberg was a man of expe- 
rience and worth, stern and unflinching, who had won his way 
by merit. He was just the man for the work ; but he had 
only six days to complete his preparations, for on July 13 the 




Turkish Soldier. 



648 



STAHREMBERG ACTIVE. 



whole country round the capital smoked from the burning 
villages fired by the Tartar horse. In these six days Stah- 
remberg did wonders ; every man in Vienna was got to work ; 
the priest and the nobleman vied with the merchant, the 
laborer, to help on the cause. Victual was collected up and 
down the river, north and south ; munitions were got from 
every point, and by July 13 over three hundred guns had 
been mounted. The spahis of the enemy's van now swarmed 
all round the town, from the mountains to the river ; and a 
column of foot appeared in the suburbs, which Stahremberg 
received with a cannonade, and drove out by destroying 
everything outside the walls. As good 
luck would have it, the line troops sent 
to garrison the city marched in on this 
same day from across the river four- 
teen thousand strong ; and with citizens, 
guilds, students and others, Stahremberg 
found under his command some twenty- 
two thousand men. On the 14th Kara 
Mustapha and his entire army stood be- 
fore Vienna. 

The Turks lost no time. On the night 
of the 13th-14th the van had opened 
trenches on the west of the town, at 
three points, and these stood under the 
grand vizier's own command, and that of Kara Mohammed 
and Ahmed Pasha. Charles, who had been lying with his 
cavalry in the Unter-Werd, retired across the Danube to the 
Bisamberg, pursued by the enemy's horse, which pressed him 
hard. The Turks then camped in a huge half-moon, along 
the hills from the river at Schwechat to the river at Nuss- 
dorf ; and during the rest of July they built batteries of 
heavy siege-guns to back up their trenches. 




Turkish Soldier. 



CHARLES OF LORRAINE. 649 

Stahremberg was the life and soul of everything. Thrice 
a day he visited the works, and though repeatedly wounded, 
desisted not from his constant efforts. He was relentless 
against the cowardly or treacherous or lazy ; equally gener- 
ous for courage or intelligence in the service. The grand 
vizier was no less active. On the tenth day of the siege the 
first mines were exploded, and sorties and assaults were of 
daily occurrence. Not to recount all these operations, suf- 
fice it to say that during the siege the Turks delivered eight 
assaults and sprung forty mines ; the besieged made twenty- 
four sorties, and fired ten counter-mines. Only seven times 
did the besieged hear from the outside news of the eagerly 
hoped-for army of relief. 

Until the arrival of relief armies from Silesia, Moravia, 
Bohemia, Poland and the principalities of the empire, Charles 
of Lorraine was to keep open the fords of the Danube and 
hold the river from Presburg to Tulln. Tokoly, on the 
other hand, led a raiding party to head off the Poles, and 
easily captured the town of Presburg ; the citadel held out. 
Hereupon Charles descended from his Bisam eyrie, sharply 
followed up the Hungarian, beat him at Landschiitz, drove 
him beyond the Waag, and recaptured Presburg. The gar- 
risons of Comorn, Raab and Altenburg proved useless, allow- 
ing Turkish convoys to pass under their walls unmolested. 
Tokoly rapidly recovered from his defeat, forced his way 
August 6 across the March at St. Johann, purposing to 
join a Turkish force which should cross the Danube at the 
Tabor island, and then drive Charles from the Bisam hills, 
aided by a demonstration of Tartar horse on St. Polten to 
engage his attention. But Charles was equal to the situa- 
tion. Sending a force against the Turks at Tabor, he pre- 
vented their crossing, and himself moved against Tokoly and 
threw him back across the March. Shortly after, he retired 



650 SOBIESKI APPEARS. 

to Tulln to protect the building of bridges for the approach- 
ing armies of relief, a movement which Tokoly improved by 
again crossing the March at Goding with his own forces and 
ten thousand Tartar cavalry, and devastating to Wolkersdorf. 
In connection with this raid, a Turkish force crossed at Mar- 
check, joined a body from Vienna, and advanced twelve thou- 
sand strong up the Danube ; but Charles, on August 24, fell 
on this body and beat it so badly at Stamersdorf, that a mere 
fraction was left to escape by swimming across the river. 
This handsome operation speedily recalled Tokoly from his 
foray- 
Meanwhile Sobieski's van had reached Olmiitz August 25, 
and on September 4 the Tulln bridge. Tokoly had been 
able but slightly to annoy his advance. Two days later the 
entire Polish army of twenty-six thousand men reported. 
The Bavarians and Saxons, the Swabians and Franconians, 
had come down the Danube, and reached Krems September 
7. During the succeeding days the passage of the Danube 
was effected. The total forces thus reunited came to thirty- 
nine thousand foot and forty-six thousand horse. In the 
absence of the emperor, the command fell to Sobieski, who, 
though a king, was a plain soldier and an able man, self-reli- 
ant and bold, who had fought against the Great Elector, the 
Swedes, the Cossacks and the Turks, and always with honor. 
Charles and he had been rival candidates for the Polish 
crown ; but they were none the less good friends. " Prince, 
take that great soldier as a model ! " said Sobieski to his son. 
Rather than consume time by marching round by the val- 
ley roads, Sobieski and Charles agreed to speed their advance 
over the Kahlenberg to the city, which was already in the 
extremity of danger. Sobieski took command of the right 
wing, Charles of the left. 

For two months the grand vizier had lain opposite Vienna, 



KARA MUST APR A. 



651 



and had not detached a man from his enormous forces to 
forestall this army of relief, or to interfere with its passage 
of the Danube. " Such a man," said Sobieski, " is already 
beaten ! " From day to day Kara Mustapha had expected to 
force an entrance within the walls. He had been so blinded 




Siege of Vienna. 

by the work in his front that he knew nothing of the opera- 
tions on his flank, and expected the army of relief by way of 
the plain and the Wienerberg. Leaving part of his forces 
in the trenches on the 9th, he moved the rest of his troops to a 
camp at Laxenburg and Neustadt, sending detachments only 
to the Kahlenberg and to Griinzing. He did not believe 
that the army of relief was a well-organized one ; he did not 



652 JUST IN TIME. 

know that it was led by Sobieski ; lie had no great opinion 
of Charles. 

The king's battle orders were brief : the imperial troops 
were to hug the river so as to throw relief into Vienna ; in the 
advance, the infantry and artillery were to precede the cav- 
alry ; once in line the latter was to fill the intervals of the 
former ; a third line was to be held in reserve ; the first and 
generally sharp onset of the Turkish cavalry was to be met 
by throwing out the light Spanish squadrons. 

The relief came none too soon. Vienna had been pounded 
into ruins ; but Stahremberg would not give up ; every breach 
was repaired, every assault was thrown back; every man, 
under his stern eye and active presence, did his duty.' The 
question was, whether the weakened garrison and works could 
resist a general assault, — and when might it not come ? 
Happy indeed was the sore beset Kaiserstadt, when rockets 
from the hills announced the friendly advance ! 

The grand vizier no longer doubted the intention of the 
Christians when, on September 12, he saw the columns emerg- 
ing from the hills. The challenge was answered. He drew 
up his army in five heavy lines, from Nussdorf to Dornbach, 
and himself commanded the centre, the pashas the wings. 
Sobieski's address to the troops was fervent : " We have 
beaten this same enemy, you and I. To-day you fight not 
for Poland but for Christianity ; not for your king, but for 
your God ! I have but one order for you : wherever you see 
your king, follow and fear not ! " 

The line was formed, and the artillery at 7 a. m. opened 
from Kahlenberg village against Nussdorf. The Poles on 
the right had a long and difficult route through the moun- 
tain roads to pass over before they could reach the Turkish 
left ; and the German troops fought seven long hours against 
heavy odds and desperate resistance through the glens and 



THE BATTLE OF VIENNA. 



653 



defiles of the foothills, making with splendid gallantry a 
marked advance. Five times did the Turkish serried masses 
charge in on the German lines ; but these wavered not, though 
a heavy Turkish battery on the Dobling hill finally put a 
term to their gain. It was 2 o'clock and neither centre nor 
right had come into close quarters with the enemy. Finally 
Sobieski emerged from the Dornbach hills and fell sharply on 
the Turkish array. Their onset was gallant ; their king was 
present at the point of grav- 
est danger ; but the deep 
masses of the Turkish for- 
mation resisted their bravest 
charges. Finally a regiment 
of lancers broke, and in its 
retreat threatened to force 
back the line in disorder. 
But Charles was near by; 
he ordered an advance on 
the Turkish centre ; it was 
given with a will ; under it 
the Poles rallied ; one more 
charge and the Turkish left 
was rolled up on its centre. Charles captured the great 
Dobling battery, drove back the enemy, and forced his way, 
fighting for every step, to Wahring, while Sobieski pursued 
the now broken enemy to Hernals. Louis of Baden headed a 
few squadrons, and fought his way to the west gate of Vienna, 
where he and Stahremberg at once made a sortie on the janis- 
saries, who still kept up a fire from their trenches. Soon a 
panic seized the Turks, and once the flight began there was 
no more organization left. In a sauve qui pent rabble the 
entire army fled — barring a slight stand at St. Ulrich's — 
back through the Wienerberg defiles to Raab. 




Polish Cavalryman. 



654 LAUGHABLE DIGNITY. 

The loss of the Turks is given as from ten thousand to 
twenty-five thousand men. That of the allies is not known. 
In the siege there had fallen in Vienna five thousand men 
from wounds, twenty thousand from disease. The booty was 
enormous. There was no marked pursuit. 

On September 14 the emperor, whose capital had been 
saved as by a miracle, reentered the city. Next day, invited by 
Sobieski, he went out to view the Turkish camp. A curious 
scene ensued. The pride-beridden successor of the Csesars, 
for fear of losing some of his imperial dignity, treated the 
king of Poland, his saviour, de haut en has, to the infinite 
disgust of the Polish army, and the annoyance, mixed with a 
keen sense of ridicule, of Sobieski. The Pole had too much 
good sense not to wash his hands of the absurd business ; 
but to Leopold, the personal attitude of the German emperor 
towards an elective king was a matter of moment. It had 
been a question of discussion in the cabinet, and on Charles of 
Lorraine being asked how the emperor should receive such a 
monarch, he replied : " When he has saved the empire, with 
open arms ! " But Leopold's ideas of rank could not permit 
him so far to condescend. 

In the grand vizier's tent was found clear proof that the 
war had been fostered by France ; and Sobieski could not 
deny himself the pleasure of sending a report of the battle in 
his own hand to the Most Christian King Louis XIV. 

The grand vizier was able enough to cast the blame on his 
subordinates, many of whom he executed, and to, justify his 
conduct to the sultan, by whom he was at first liberally 
rewarded. The retreat of the Turkish army was hastened by 
Charles and Sobieski, who followed it up as far as Ofen. 
Other engagements ensued, but they have no part in the 
relief of Vienna. 



LII. 

LUXEMBUEG AND CATINAT. 16*90-1693. 

Luxemburg was naturally a good soldier ; but he was stunted by the narrow 
method of Louvois, which was a mere war of sieges that parceled out the 
army in small detachments. In 1690 Luxemburg had one hundred thousand 
men in the Netherlands, to oppose less than sixty thousand allies. He met 
Waldeck at Fleurus in July, and coupled with a cavalry flank attack, his 
assault was stout enough to win a handsome victory. The road to Brus- 
sels was open, but Luxemburg did not know enough to improve the occa- 
sion. In 1692 William III. fell on Luxemburg at Steenkirke, but owing to 
difficulties of the ground, was beaten with very heavy loss. In 1693 Lux- 
emburg again met William at Neerwinden, where the allies were heavily 
intrenched, and again won a hard -fought victory. But despite all these 
triumphs the French gained no headway, and the allies kept the field. In this 
same year Catinat defeated the duke of Savoy at Marsaglia. The result of 
these splendid victories was comparatively little. 

Befoee proceeding to the brilliant campaigns which char- 
acterized the War of the Spanish Succession, short mention 
should be made of three of the battles of the French under the 
duke of Luxemburg. This officer, who certainly possessed 
many of the qualities which go to make up a solid general, 
and who covered with renown the arms of France in the 
Netherlands, is nevertheless an excellent example of how 
depressing an effect the unenterprising method of that day 
could exert on even an able man, and brings out in stronger 
relief the immense personality of such a soldier as Turenne, 
who was able to cut loose from the hard and fast rules of 
the then art, and despite the inert tendencies of Louvois, put 
his own individuality into what he did ; and of such men as 
Eugene and Marlborough, who cast to the winds the ancient 




656 A NARROW RULE. 

ways, refusing to be tied by an obsolete system, and thus 
paved the way for a Frederick and a Napoleon. Guided 
either by the narrow rules of the art as he understood them, 
or by the narrower instructions of Louvois, who, though a 
great war minister, did not understand war, Luxemburg was 
able to accomplish less than his op- 
portunities and his opponents should 
have yielded him. With such re- 
sources, what might not a Turenne 
have won for France ! What we 
might call Louvois' one maxim of 
war was : Take all the enemy's strong 
places which you can lay your hands 
on so soon as you reach his terri- 
tory; and though he had seen the 
Luxemburg. niost splendid victories and the great- 

est successes of France won by men 
who disregarded the rule and moved on the enemy, he could 
not get beyond this point in his comprehension of war. That 
this system called for the parceling out of troops in petty 
detachments in the various sieges, to much useless small war, 
and to the loss of many men in efforts to accomplish what 
was scarcely worth the while, he did not consider. His 
system made him naturally timid ; the advent on the theatre 
of operations of a force so small that he could afford to 
despise it sent him into a tremor of caution, and resulted as 
a rule in his giving his generals orders to act on the defen- 
sive. He spent much time and more money in spying out 
what the enemy was doing, when he might have kept the 
initiative. One of his pet schemes was to rob the enemy of 
means of subsistence by devastating wide districts, or by 
devising extensive operations to cut off the enemy's supplies. 
All this was done with immense outlay and with vast intelli- 



TERRAIN OF FLEURUS. 



657 



gence ; but it lacked that divine spark to which, if to any- 
thing, the genius for war is due. 

At the opening of 1690 there stood one hundred thousand 
French under the duke of Luxemburg on the borders of the 
Netherlands. Opposite them were eighteen thousand Span- 
iards under Castanaga ; while thirty thousand allies under 
Prince Waldeck lay between the Meuse and Dender. A body 
of eleven thousand Brandenburgers was approaching, and 
their coming so strongly impressed Louvois that he ordered 
Luxemburg to stand on the defensive. The huge French 
force was in three corps : Marshal Boufflers leaning on the 
Meuse ; the duke in the centre ; and Marshal Humieres 
between the Scheldt and Lys. The latter body took no part 
in the operations, but remained in its fortified lines. Luxem- 
burg began by devastating the 
region occupied by his left; 
but learning that Waldeck 
had marched towards Dinant 
on the Meuse, he drew in 
Boufflers and advanced on the 
prince with forty thousand 
men. At Fleurus, northeast 
of Charleroi, he met Waldeck 
at the head of twenty-five thou- 
sand allies on July 1. The 
prince was drawn up with 
Ligny and St. Am and in front 
of his left, and Fleurus some 
distance in front of his right, 
front, and the land rose towards his right, and then suddenly 
dipped so as to conceal the movement of troops beyond the 
edge of the hill to any one on the level. Beyond the brook 
was land of about equal height, on which lay the French. 




cb cb cb cb cb; 
cb cb cbcb 



Battle of Fleurus. 



A small stream ran in his 



658 



BATTLE OF STAFFARDA. 




Catinat. 



Drawing up in two lines of infantry, with the horse in two 
lines on the flanks, Luxemburg sent Gournay, an excellent 
cavalry officer, with the entire left wing, under cover of the 
hill of Fleurus, around to fall on the right flank of the allies. 
Waldeck neglected to scout the vicin- 
ity of his position, and knew nothing 
of the manoeuvre. While Gournay 
was on the way, the French infantry 
made a stout front attack by crossing 
the stream and marching up the slope 
of the plateau, which assault Waldeck 
met in good style, and drove back. 
But Luxemburg rallied his battalions 
and again led them to the attack ; and 
this being nicely timed, so that Gour- 
nay could simultaneously fall on the 
flank of the allies, their array was 
broken up with extremely heavy losses, — said to have been 
six thousand killed. The victory was decisive. The road to 
Bi'ussels was open ; but neither would Luxemburg of his own 
initiative advance farther, nor could he do so without orders 
from Louvois. He celebrated his triumph by camping six 
days on the battle-field, and then retired across the Sambre, 
and permitted Waldeck at his leisure to join the elector of 
Brandenburg in Brussels. 

In this same year Marshal Catinat won a victory over the 
duke of Savoy at Staffarda. There were but eighteen thou- 
sand French in Italy, but they were assisted by the incompe- 
tence of the duke. Crossing the Po from Turin, he marched 
against Catinat and met him at the monastery of Staffarda. 
He intended to attack, but assuming a defensive position full 
of faults, Catinat took advantage of one of these, turned his 
left flank and utterly worsted him. The French then captured 



WILLIAM III. 659 

Susa and overran Savoy. There are no reliable accounts of 
this engagement. 

For the next year (1691) France put one hundred and 
twenty thousand men into the field. As it was his occasional 
pleasure to do, Louis XIV. took the field in person and 
besieged Mons; having taken which he returned to Paris. 
Luxemburg was left in command, with instructions not to 
indulge in battle unless victory was secure, and to rely mainly 
on his cavalry. Neither party had any apparent liking for the 
offensive this year ; Liege was burned by Luxemburg from 
political spite ; and William III. moved on Dinant, expect- 
ing to attack Marshal Boufflers singly ; but Luxemburg came 
up to his aid. Far outnumbering the enemy, he would have 
liked to fight ; but his rigid instructions held him back. 
This was the sort of campaign which Louvois deemed a hand- 
some one. 

William III. was as if created to oppose such an unscru- 
pulous conqueror as Louis XIV. He was not of the mould 
which is instinct with great projects ; he had no craving for 
extension of territory ; but he was determined to keep what 
he rightfully owned, and to do this, as he said, " he could die 
in the last dike." Few men have lost so many battles and 
still kept the field ; fewer yet would have broken the dikes 
and let the ocean in to destroy the work of generations in 
order to preserve the autonomy of his country and the faith 
and liberty it enjoyed. He was of the stuff which would 
have given Holland as a whole back to the waves, and have 
begun afresh a republic in the New World. 

Without being in any sense a great soldier, William accom- 
plished results where men who had many of the captain's 
traits would have wrecked their cause. Beginning with but 
a tithe of the gigantic forces of the French, he slowly 
worked up to an equality with them ; meanwhile, with a per- 



660 



STEENKIRKE FIELD. 



sistency rarely matched, wresting from them and holding 
more and more ground. He was so fond of war that he 
fought at St. Denis after he knew that peace had been con- 
cluded. He was not a brilliant soldier, but he was a safe one 
in the role which he enacted. 

Next year, 1692, Louis in person besieged Namur. Lou- 
vois had died. On the capture of the place, Luxemburg was 
again left in command with defensive orders, and he chose to 
retire to the Brussels country, where was more forage for his 
large force of cavalry, artillery and train horses. William 




Battle of Steenkirke. 

spread a report that he would undertake to recapture Namur, 
and having made some feints in that direction, Luxemburg 
weakened himself to send a detachment to the aid of Namur, 
and gave William the opportunity to fall on him at Steen- 
kirke. 

Luxemburg was camped with the right leaning on Steen- 
kirke and his left near Enghien ; William lay between Tubise 
and St. Renelde ; the ground between the two armies was 



A BRILLIANT OPENING. 661 

well accentuated by hills of one or two hundred feet above 
the bed of the Senne, and so much cut up by woods, marshes 
and hedges that it was a network of defiles, through which it 
was almost impossible to manoeuvre to advantage. Neither 
army could approach the other except by passing through 
such defiles. There happened to be a spy at the allied head- 
quarters who sold news to the Trench. This man William dis- 
covered and compelled to write to Luxemburg that the allies 
were about to seize the defiles along the Steenkirke brook in 
order to protect their foragers, but without the intention of 
making any special movement ; and under this ruse de guerre 
managed to mass his men and to debouch suddenly on Lux- 
emburg July 24, to the utter surprise of the latter, who had 
explained away the news which his scouts brought in by the 
information received from his old spy. William had done 
well, but the event was not as fortunate as the beginning. 

The Trench right, composed of horse, lay in advance of 
Steenkirke, and to protect this a brigade of foot had camped 
in its front. Upon this force the blow of the allies first fell ; 
its guns were taken and turned against the French, and the 
right seemed threatened with destruction. But the allies 
could not debouch rapidly enough from behind the brook. 
Luxemburg was active, speedily sent succor to the right, 
where the damage was repaired, and got his forces into line 
with what was, under the circumstances, most praiseworthy 
speed. Luckily for the French, their front was covered by 
fields inclosed by hedges, which prevented the allies from 
summarily attacking their line en masse. William's front 
attack was feeble, and was driven back by the French first 
line, which then advanced and enabled the second line to 
form in its rear and get out beyond the camp. Once in line, 
the French fought well, and William, whose own right had 
been led astray by a night march and had not come up, had 



662 A USELESS VICTORY. 

really accomplished nothing but a surprise of the French 
right. The fighting was tenacious to the last degree on both 
sides. The ground was unsuited to the operations of cav- 
alry, and the whole affair was a melee, quite lacking any- 
thing like grand-tactics. The battle was in an irregular par- 
allel order, and the allies were not so well marshaled as to 
deliver a sudden and effective blow. Much fault was found 
on the allied side for the failure of Count Solmes to sustain 
the English column. The result of the battle was the defeat 
of the allies, with, it is claimed, ten thousand dead and as 
many wounded. The French loss must have been as great. 
The allies abandoned most of their guns. Had William 
delayed his attack until he was sure that his right had come 
up, the victory would probably have been his, for his strata- 
gem worked well ; he was hidden by the ground and by the 
deceit practiced on Luxemburg, and the French were quite 
taken by surprise. 

Despite this splendid victory, Luxemburg did nothing. On 
the other hand, William, who was curiously hard to discour- 
age, managed to join fifteen thousand English troops, which 
had landed in Ostende, and then captured Furnes and Dix- 
muiden. On his leaving the Netherlands these places were 
recaptured by the French. 

For the campaign of 1693 Louis put no less than one hun- 
dred and thirty thousand men in the field, and personally 
undertook the siege of Liege, a work which, for lack of a 
better objective, William determined to interrupt. About 
this time Heidelberg fell, which gave the French a chance to 
win success in Germany, and forty thousand men were sent 
thither from the Netherlands, while Louis left Luxemburg 
to continue the operations against William, instructing him 
to keep the allies from manoeuvring towards the sea-coast. 
To carry out these orders, Luxemburg threatened Louvain 



NEERWINDEN FIELD. 



663 



and then Liege, and lost much time in useless operations ; 
but learning in July that William had depleted his force by 
a number of detachments, and lay at Neerwinden on the 
Geete, he marched to attack him, though he had but half his 
force under the colors. 

Neerwinden is close to the Little Geete, and the village of 
Romsdorf lies east of it on the brook of Landen or Molen- 




I.UXE.M BOUFJG 

Battle of Neerwinden. 



beck, both of which streams unite to the north and form a 
triangular plateau five miles long. Here William had 
camped, between Neerwinden and Romsdorf, and, hearing of 
Luxemburg's approach, had fortified his lines, and believed 
the position impregnable. The line was convex. Neerwinden 
and a small ravine with a quickset hedge from the village to 
the Geete protected the allied right ; the centre was covered 



664 FIERCE COMBATS. 

by somewhat lower land in its front to Romsdorf ; the left 
was thrown back en potence, and proved useless in the 
battle. The weakness of the position was that it was a 
crowded one. The right was made especially strong, Neer- 
winden was filled with foot, and Romsdorf was intrenched. 
One hundred guns stood in battery along the line. The 
horse was in reserve or on the left. The land to the 
south is slightly higher than the Neerwinden plateau, but 
gently descends towards it. The beds of the brooks are 
sixty to eighty feet lower than the rolling hills. 

On the afternoon of July 28 Luxemburg arrived in Wil- 
liam's front with his van of cavalry and reconnoitred. His 
first duty was to expel the enemy from Landen, which he did, 
so as to lean his right on it in the battle he proposed to 
deliver next day, and here he put forty battalions of foot. At 
daylight of July 29 the guns opened, and under a severe fire, 
the French formed for the attack. They were substantially 
in two lines of foot with two lines of horse in their rear, and 
cavalry on both flanks in three lines. 

The main attack was opened at 6 A. M. by the French left 
on Neerwinden. The French pushed vigorously in, took the 
village, but were fiercely met and driven out. On the French 
right the fighting was less marked. A second time Luxem- 
burg assaulted Neerwinden and successfully gained an en- 
trance, but only to be a second time ejected, partly because 
the assault on Romsdorf was not pushed home, so as to give 
the enemy more to do. 

Luxemburg deserves great credit for not losing courage at 
these two failures. He prepared for a new assault on Neer- 
winden, and as he saw that in anticipation of it the allies 
were disgarnishing their left centre to protect Neerwinden 
with more troops, he directed Marquis Feuquiere to assault 
the intrenchments on the west of Romsdorf in force. This 



CREDIT DUE WILLIAM. 665 

was done in good form, and Feuquiere made a lodgment on 
the highest part of the ground held by the allied line, and 
thus took the foot defending Neerwinden in reverse, and in a 
determined assault at the same time the duke took Neerwin- 
den and held it. This was the moment for the allied cavalry 
of the left to put in its work. There had been and was nothing 
in its front ; and had it been well commanded, it could have 
changed front and hustled the French under Feuquiere back 
by a charge on their flank. But this body of cavalry, with- 
out firing a salvo or drawing a sabre, saw fit to retire to Lean, 
and between the duke and Feuquiere the bulk of the allied 
foot on the right was driven into the Geete, with a loss of 
eighteen thousand men killed, wounded and prisoners, one 
hundred and four guns and numberless trophies. The French 
loss was heavy. There was no attempt at pursuit ; Luxem- 
burg was held by his orders to obtain further instructions 
from the king ; and finally he sat down to besiege Charleroi. 
The result of this splendid victory was naught, owing to the 
mischievous system ingrained in all the French generals by 
Louvois. The taking of Charleroi ended this campaign. It 
is a remarkable fact, and much to his credit, that despite all 
these defeats William kept the field. It would have been 
otherwise had Turenne stood in the place of Luxemburg. 

Luxemburg died in 1695. Villeroi succeeded him, but 
accomplished nothing. The year which saw the victory of 
Neerwinden in the Low Countries added one more victory to 
the French arms in Italy. In 1691 Prince Eugene came to 
assist the duke of Savoy, and the French accomplished little. 
In 1692 the duke raised his forces to fifty thousand men 
and made a raid into the Dauphine, but without much result. 
In 1693, as he was besieging Pinerolo, Catinat, who had 
been pushed well back into the mountains, escaped from his 
trap, turned the duke's flank and obliged him to retire, and 



666 



A CRITICAL MISTAKE. 






then forced battle on him October 4 at Marsaglia, southwest 
of Turin. 

When the duke became aware of the approach of the 
French, he crossed the little river Cisola and drew up his 
army, leaning his left on this stream, and extending his right 
across to a small patch of woods which lay near another small 
stream, unnamed. On his left was the height of Piosaca, on 
which he might have leaned this flank to effect ; but neglect- 
ing to do so, he left it for the enemy to occupy, and thus 
threaten his line in reverse. Both streams were almost dry 

at this season, and 
the wood on the 
duke's right was so 
open that even caval- 
ry could ride through 
it. Catinat at once 
seized on the salient 
errors of the duke, 
and occupied the Pi- 
osaca heights. He 
then pushed a stout 
attack all along the 
Savoyard line, and followed it up by enveloping its left. 
Success began here. The duke's army was rolled up on the 
centre and right, and so badly defeated that some time after 
he concluded peace. 

During this period the operations on the Rhine were insig- 
nificant. The war on the border of Spain was enlivened only 
by the conquest of Barcelona (1697). In Ireland the cause 
of James was lost in the battle of the Boyne ; and at Cape 
La Hogue the English fleet destroyed the French fleet in 
1692. 

There is no denying to the French a number of brilliant 







Battle of Marsaglia. 



PEACE OF RYSWICK. 667 

victories on land ; they were in a sense almost as splendid 
as the later victories of the allies under Marlborough and 
Eugene. But the latter knew how to utilize them and gen- 
erally did ; not so the Louvois-taught French. And the result 
of all their victories did not offset the general downhill ten- 
dency of the fortune of France. 

France had lost so much that it would seem as if the allies 
could have imposed harsh terms on her. But in the Peace of 
Ryswick (1697) she was no further mulcted than to make her 
yield up, except Alsatia and Strasburg, all her conquests in 
the Netherlands, on the Rhine and in Spain. In this peace 
William III. was acknowledged king of England and Anne 
as his successor. The main fortresses in the Spanish Nether- 
lands were to be garrisoned by the Dutch. Freiburg, Brei- 
sach and Philipsburg went to the empire; Zweibrticken to 
Sweden ; Lorraine was restored to Duke Leopold ; the Rhine 
was made free. 

Except the work of Luxemburg and Catinat, nothing in 
the operations since the death of Turenne is worthy of ex- 
tended notice. 




French Musketeer. (17th Century.) 



Lin, 

PRINCE EUGENE AGAINST CATINAT. 1701. 

The death, childless, of Charles II. of Spain left France, Austria and Bavaria 
to claim the throne ; and the War of the Spanish Succession resulted. Prince 
Eugene of Savoy was French by birth, but, unable to get military preferment 
at home, he sought his fortune at the court of the emperor, whom thereafter he 
served throughout life. By his exceptional skill, courage and services he early 
rose to be field-marshal, and in 1697 won the splendid victory of Zenta against 
the Turks. In 1701 Prince Eugene with thirty thousand men was sent to Italy 
against Catinat. He cut a new road down the Adige, crossed below Verona, 
and gradually forced the French back. Catinat was restricted by his orders, 
and had not been able to manoeuvre as he otherwise might. By skillful opera- 
tions, Eugene regained all northern Italy as far as the Oglio. 

The intermarriages of the reigning families of Europe 
have generally resulted in rival claims of territory or in jeal- 
ousy of a preponderating political influence. In the opening 
year of the eighteenth century a serious European question 
arose from the death of Charles II. of Spain. A genealogical 
table best explains the facts. 

Philip III. of Spain, d. 1621. 



Anna = Louis XIII. Philip IV. Maria Anna = Ferdinand II. Emp. 

I of France. | I of Austria. 

I r i ~ i i 

Louis XIV. = Maria Theresa. Charles II. Margaret Theresa = Leopold I. 

I d. 1700. I 



Louis the Dauphin. II 

| Elector of Bavaria = Maria Antoinette. Joseph I. Charles VI. 

Philip of Anjou or | Emp. 1705- Emp. 1711- 

V. of Spain. Joseph Ferdinand, 1711. 1740. 
El. Prince of Bavaria. 

Inasmuch as Charles II. was childless, and the Spanish 
Hapsburgs threatened to become extinct after the general 
settlement of the Peace of Ryswick, the question as to who 



''PLUS BE PYRENEES!" 669 

should succeed to the Spanish throne became the leading 
one among all the nations of Europe. In 1698 the powers 
made a treaty of partition, by which Spain, the Indies and 
the Netherlands should go to the electoral prince of Bava- 
ria ; Naples and Sicily and some other minor places to the 
Dauphin ; Milan to the Archduke Charles. This treaty, 
concluded without the consent of Charles II., provoked this 
monarch into making the prince elector of Bavaria his sole 
heir ; and to this the naval powers agreed ; but the death of 
the prince in 1699 reopened the entire question. In 1700 
another treaty of partition was made, by which Spain and the 
Indies should go to the Archduke Charles ; Naples, Sicily 
and Lorraine to the Dauphin, and Milan to the duke of 
Lorraine as a compensation for his own land. But again 
changing his mind, Charles II. made a will leaving his entire 
possessions to Philip of Anjou, and in 1700 died. Louis 
XIV. then chose to disregard the treaty of partition and to act 
under the will ; and the duke of Anjou was proclaimed as 
Philip V., and started for Spain amid the cries of " II n'y a 
plus de Pyrenees ! " 

The complex nature of this question, which was what led to 
the War of the Spanish Succession, thus had a legal and a po- 
litical aspect. On the one side there were three claimants to 
the throne of Spain : Louis XIV., son of the elder daughter 
of Philip III. and husband of the elder daughter of Philip 
IV., both of which princesses had renounced their inheritance ; 
Leopold I. of Austria, son of the younger daughter of Philip 
III. and husband of the younger daughter of Philip IV., 
both of which princesses had reserved their inheritance ; 
Joseph Ferdinand, electoral prince of Bavaria, great-grandson 
of Philip IV. Louis XIV. claimed the throne for his second 
grandson, and Leopold for his second son. On the other 
side, the balance of power forbade that either France or Aus- 



670 THE CONTESTANTS. 

tria should succeed to the enormous Spanish territory, and 
England and Holland joined hands to enforce this view. 
The naval powers and estates of the empire, with Prussia 
(and later Portugal), joined the emperor in a Grand Alliance 
to prevent France from securing Spain. As allies France 
had Savoy and Mantua, Bavaria and Cologne, but in 1703 
Savoy deserted Prance. The three great men of the Grand 
Alliance were Eugene, the emperor's general, Marlborough, 
the commander of the Anglo-Dutch, and A. Heinsius, pen- 
sionary of Holland. After the death of William III. in 
1702, Spain played no great part in the war, and being safe 
on her weakest point, the Pyrenees, France could devote her 
energies to Italy, the Rhine and the Netherlands. France 
had interior lines and a single purpose ; the allies had exte- 
rior lines and very divergent purposes. In population the 
two contestants were about equal ; but Austria was kept busy 
by her Hungarian troubles and the Turkish wars. England 
was wholly in earnest; Holland needed to defend herself 
against France, from whose ambition she had in the late wars 
suffered so much. The other members of the Grand Alliance 
were not easy to persuade into giving active succor. It was 
in the War of the Spanish Succession that we find the best 
work of Eugene, Marlborough, Vendome and Villars. 

Prince Eugene of Savoy was fifth son of Prince Maurice of 
Savoy-Carignan, count of Soissons, commander of the Swiss 
in the French service, and governor of Champagne. His 
mother was niece of Cardinal Mazarin. He was born in 
Paris, October 18, 1663, and early destined for the church. 
His father died when he was ten, and his mother fell into dis- 
favor. Eugene sought admittance to the army, but could not 
obtain it, as his diminutive stature and slight physique spoke 
against him. But from childhood up he had pored over Plu- 
tarch's Lives ; his firm desire was to be a soldier ; his studies 



PRINCE EUGENE. 



671 




all tended in this direction, and he made himself proficient in 
every technical branch of the military art. 

Unable to get military preferment in France, Eugene went 
— as many other young noblemen did — to Vienna, where 
the Emperor Leopold was seeking well-trained volunteers to 
resist the incursions of the Turks. Here, in 1683, he especially 
distinguished himself in the re- 
lief of Vienna by Sobieski, rose 
speedily to be colonel, did a 
great deal of staff duty, and 
earned universal commenda- 
tion from his superiors. In the 
wars against the Turks, Prince 
Eugene showed himself to have 
not only a true military eye, 
but a quite uncommon courage, 
moral and physical. His acts 
of gallantry were exceptional, 
and he proved that he could shoulder responsibility. In 1686 
he rose to be major-general, and two years later field-marshal 
lieutenant, being then but twenty-five years of age. He had 
already been several times wounded. 

The Netherlands War had again broken out in 1689. The 
emperor, with Bavaria, Sweden and Spain, took the part of 
the prince of Orange against France, and Leopold sent Prince 
Eugene to Turin to negotiate a treaty with Duke Victor Ama- 
deus. The prince would have preferred to remain in ser- 
vice against the Turks, but he accomplished his mission well. 
(1689-1690.) 

Learning of this treaty, Louis XIV. sent Catinat with 
twelve thousand men into Piedmont. Prince Eugene was 
dispatched with eighteen thousand men to reinforce the duke ; 
and, in connection with him, or at times alone, Eugene fought 



Prince Eugene. 



672 EUGENE'S EARLY WORK. 

handsomely in the Italian campaigns of 1690 to 1696, when 
by mutual agreement Italy became neutral. 

Louis XIV. now tried to win Eugene back, by offering him 
the grade of marshal of France, the governorship of Cham- 
pagne and two hundred thousand livres salary ; but Eugene 
clave to the emperor, who had steadily befriended him, and 
for this act of loyalty was placed in larger commands. 

His first independent campaign was in 1697 with fifty 
thousand men against the Turks under the Sultan Kara Mus- 







rWIDIN 

%l?> Danube r 






Zenta Campaign. 

tapha, who had advanced on the empire a hundred thousand 
strong. He moved down between the Save and the Drave 
rivers to the Danube-Theiss region, where, after some ma- 
noeuvring between these two rivers, he checked the Turks in 
the siege of Peterwardein and of Szegedin. Among the most 
interesting campaigns of this great soldier during his long and 
laborious life are those against the Turks, but they do not come 
within the scope of this work. The battle which practically 
ended this campaign is, however, characteristic of the man. 



ASSUMING RESPONSIBILITY. 673 

The sultan planned to cross to the left bank of the Theiss, 
intending to pillage and devastate upper Hungary and Sieben- 
biirgen (Transylvania) ; and Prince Eugene determined to 
attack his army at the passage of the bridge which it held, 
before it had completed the operation. At the moment of 
attack the prince received dispatches, but he is said, rather 
doubtfully, to have refused to open them, rightly guessing 
that they were orders not to be led into battle. 

The Turkish army was drawn up in a great bow in front of 
the bridge near Zenta, protected by earthworks, by the bag- 
gage wagons lashed together Zisca-fashion, and with an inner 
bridge-head. About one hundred guns were in position. 
Zenta was near the right. The river was covered with trans- 
ports, and a part of the Turkish army under the sultan had 
already crossed to the other side ; and for this reason Eugene 
was anxious to attack. It was September 11. 

Having left his infantry resting under arms, the prince 
rode forward to reconnoitre ; and ascertaining that the Turks 
were hastening to get across, — a fact which was apt to breed 
confusion, — he at once brought his army into position, with 
the right on the Theiss, and swung it by a right wheel so that 
it enveloped the enemy's lines. There were but three or 
four hours of daylight. His concentric fire of artillery was 
highly effective and that of the Turks the reverse, for their 
guns were big and cumbrous and their ammunition ill-as- 
sorted. The attack was begun by the grand vizier sending 
out a cavalry detachment, which was, however, quickly driven 
back ; General Rabutin on the Austrian left opened the 
assault ; the centre under Prince Eugene and right under 
Count Stahremberg followed. The Turks resisted stoutly, 
but the Austrians, though outnumbered two to one, stormed 
the earthworks and an hour later the bridge-head. Here the 
fighting was desperate and the Turkish loss fearful, for the 



674 A SPLENDID VICTORY. 

Austrians gave no quarter. The victory was complete. From 
ten thousand to twenty thousand Turks are said to have 
fallen, among them many pashas and the grand vizier. The 
camp on the other bank and an enormous booty fell into the 
Austrian hands ; guns and flags were captured wholesale ; and 
the Turks retired east to Temesvar. The Austrian loss was 
but two thousand killed and wounded. 

This first victory of Prince Eugene's does him great credit, 
especially in view of the responsibility he took. After a three 
days' rest he followed the Turks, but they had retired south 
to Belgrade, leaving a strong garrison in Temesvar. The 
siege of this place promised to occupy so much time that it 
would practically consume the rest of the campaign; and 
Eugene preferred to quarter his troops and undertake an expe- 
dition with twenty-five hundred foot, four thousand horse and 
twelve guns into Bosnia, to capture the capital, Bosna-Seraj. 
The Turks were far from expecting an incursion, and in less 
than three weeks the prince overcame the whole province and 
returned. The capital was captured and accidentally burned ; 
the citadel held out. On the home march the Austrians 
destroyed the defenses of all captured towns, and the army 
then went into winter-quarters. 

On returning to Vienna Prince Eugene found that his ene- 
mies, under the lead of Field-Marshal Caprara, had managed 
to rouse the anger of the emperor against him for disobedience 
of orders in fighting the battle of Zenta, and he was placed in 
arrest. The people, rejoiced at the splendid victory, were, 
however, with him ; the disfavor of the emperor lasted but a 
short while, and resulted in the justification of the prince, 
who next year was again placed in sole command in Hun- 
gary, and made independent of the Austrian council general 
of war. His short humiliation, which is also doubtful, in no 
wise harmed his eventual reputation. 



ARMIES IN 1701. 675 

In 1698 the Austrian army continued under command of 
Prince Eugene, who manoeuvred over much the same terri- 
tory; but we cannot detail the operations, and the war event- 
ually languished into a truce and peace. 

Prince Eugene was next employed in the War of the Span- 
ish Succession. 

At the opening of 1701 the emperor had under his control 
not exceeding eighty-five thousand men. Of these thirty 
thousand, one third horse, were sent under Eugene into Italy, 
and assembled at Roveredo ; twenty-one thousand were on 
the Rhine, and the rest were in Austria and Hungary. 
Louis XIV. and his allies had over two hundred thousand 
men, of whom seventy-five thousand were in Flanders, not 
including the garrisons of the strong places, fifteen thousand 
on the Moselle, forty-one thousand on the Rhine, three thou- 
sand in Alsatian garrisons, and in Italy thirty-three thousand 
in the field and eleven thousand in garrison, not to count 
some twenty thousand Savoyards and Wolfenbiittel troops. 
Louis' large preponderance of force and his alliance with 
Bavaria opened a promising chance for a summary march on 
Vienna with his main army, which should cross the Rhine and 
join the Bavarians and Wolfenbiittel troops, the whole to be 
sustained on the right by the advance of the Italian contin- 
gent. Such an operation might have settled the war in his 
favor in one campaign. The emperor would probably have 
succumbed, and the allies been dispersed. But Louis chose 
to act on the defensive, for he no longer had a Turenne to 
advise him ; the emperor joined hands with the other enemies 
of France, and during the long war which followed, the empire, 
England and Holland were held together by the splendid 
abilities of Eugene, Marlborough and Heinsius. 

In the early part of 1701 there were then in Italy some 
thirty-three thousand French in the field ; five thousand in 



676 



CAT IN ATS POSITION. 



Mantua, and six thousand in the strong places of Mirandola, 
Cremona, Pizzighetone, Lodi, Lecco and other towns. They 
were of good quality, but scarcely as able as the imperial 
troops, who had seen war in Hungary and were service-hard- 




ened. Marshal Catinat, who was in command, with orders to 
remain on the defensive and not to cross to the left bank of 
the Adige, — in other words not to invade Venetian territory, 
— took up his stand at Rivoli between the lake of Garda and 
the Adige, where he lay athwart the imperial advance from 



A NEW ROAD BUILT. 677 

the Tyrol into northern Italy. Prince Eugene, whose task it 
was to drive the French from Italy, and who joined the army 
at Eoveredo May 20, at once perceived that he had no 
resource but to violate the neutrality of Venice by crossing 
her territory, and determined to move down on the left bank 
of the Adige, and cross the river below. This was a thing- 
he would scarcely have dared to do unless he had known by 
means of a secret understanding with the duke of Savoy, the 
happy relic of their recent joint campaigns against Catinat, 
that the French marshal had orders not to cross the Adige ; 
for without this certainty Eugene laid himself open to being 
absolutely cut off from his base. The only good road, at 
that day, lay over the foothills of Monte Baldo along the 
right bank, and was in possession of the enemy. The route 
Eugene proposed to take was then a mere footpath, and a 
proper road over thirty miles long had to be built at vast 
exertion. A force of six thousand pioneers was set to work, 
and within a week several roads down the valleys of the 
Adige affluents were made practicable ; but they remained 
so poor that the cavalry was compelled to lead the horses in 
single file, and the wagons and guns had to be dismounted 
at some places, and at others to be lowered or raised by 
windlasses up or down perpendicular rocks. 

On this road, despite the difficulties, which were sur- 
mounted by wonderful persistence and ability, Prince Eugene 
moved south, and on May 28 reached Verona undiscovered 
by Catinat, whose orders not only tied his hands, but who 
must have relaxed his usual vigilance ; for while Eugene 
worked and marched behind the mountains, a proper system 
of spies or scouting would have revealed his project. Eugene 
quite outwitted his opponent. So soon as the French general 
discovered the imperial manoeuvre, he left part of his army at 
Eivoli and marched down the right bank of the Adige with 



678 PRECEDENT FOR OUR CAVALRY. 

the rest ; but Eugene had disposed his troops from Verona 
down in such a way as to make Catinat string out his own 
forces over a long line. He utilized the southwesterly bend 
of the Adige below Cologna so as to compel Catinat to occupy 
the bow on bad terrain, while he himself held only the chord 
on good, and by skillful feints managed to convince his oppo- 
nent that he would pass the river above Verona, though his 
troops already reached down as far as Legnano. Catinat did 
not fathom Eugene's scheme, and tired his troops by restless 
marching up and down ; and the prince, meanwhile keeping 
Catinat busy at Rivoli by a small detachment, bridged the 
swollen Adige and the several canals to the west, put his 
forces over at Castelbaldo on July 9, and taking Carpi, in 
front of which he beat a large French cavalry party with loss 
of one thousand men, he crossed the Tartaro and threatened 
Catinat's right flank. In this engagement Eugene himself 
was wounded. Like Gustavus, he was always in the thick of 
the fray, and his wounds were frequent, but happily not often 
severe. 

In this combat at Carpi, it is noteworthy that Eugene 
employed his dragoons in exactly the same manner as we were 
wont to use our cavalry in the civil war : he dismounted them 
on ground unsuitable for cavalry, and on good terrain sent 
them in at a charge against the enemy. We could ask no 
better precedent for our American method. 

When Catinat found Eugene in force below Verona, he 
imagined that he was about to push towards the Po, cross it 
and enter the Modena territory, and he still further divided 
his forces, leading a strong party down to Ostiglia. He 
had started on a wrong theory, and could not cast it off. 
Had Eugene pushed home at this moment, he might have 
turned his flank and rolled up the entire French army like 
a scroll ; but bad roads, which made concentration difficidt, 



CA TINA T RELIE VED. 679 

and the delay in the crossing of his heavy artillery and trains 
held him back, and Catinat managed to save himself by sum- 
mary retreat on Villafranca, where he concentrated his scat- 
tered forces. Eugene made preparations to attack him the 
next day, but Catinat had now gauged the enemy's purpose, 
gathered his dispersed forces, withdrew in the night across 
the Mincio and escaped. His main force he posted between 
Goito and Vallegio. The prince's whole operation had been 
admirably planned and executed, and deserves study in detail. 
In fact, one can scarcely appreciate the niceties of Eugene's 
strategy otherwise than by following every one of his move- 
ments day by day. 

Shortly after, Prince Eugene made a flank movement up 
river past and near by the French army ; and purposing to 
cross the Mincio and aim for Castiglione, he assembled his 
bridge-material at Salionze, where on July 28 he put over the 
army. He expected a French attack, but Catinat declined it, 
and retired behind the Chiese. While in this region, Eugene 
tried one of his fertile schemes to get hold of Mantua by 
treachery, but it quite failed ; the enemy kept the place. 

Louis XIV., dissatisfied with Catinat's apparent neglect, 
and unmindful of how he had been hampered by his orders, 
replaced him by Villeroi, until the arrival of whom the duke 
of Savoy as senior assumed supreme command. The latter 
brought a reinforcement of seventeen thousand troops, which 
increased the French-Savoyard army to fifty thousand men. 

By advancing a wing to Peschiera and Lonato, Prince 
Eugene securely regained his direct communications with the 
Tyrol, but the French made no signs of attacking him. He 
then pushed forward to Castiglione and Montechiaro, and 
thence to Brescia, a manoeuvre which turned the left flank of 
the French and threatened their communications with France 
through the Milan district, but which in turn laid him open 



680 ON THE OGLIO. 

to the same danger from the larger French army, that could 
always base on Mantua. The duke, however, thought not of 
any such bold scheme as a grand turning operation, but 
retired behind the Oglio, drawing in the troops from its 
upper waters down to Caneto, so as to present a new front to 
the imperial army. 

Eugene had been victualing out of the Mantua region, but 
now transferred his commissariat. He had learned from the 
duke of Savoy that Villeroi had fighting orders, and though 
always active, had kept to small war only, for the enemy, now 
reinforced, quite outnumbered him. But in order to hold 
himself better, he advanced to the Oglio, took up a strong 
position at Chiari, and sat down to await some ten thousand 
reinforcements of his own which were to arrive from the 
Tyrol along the road west of Lake Garda, and via Salo down 
to Brescia, which city his position protected. He lay in the 
open country, but he could lean his flanks on small streams 
too deep to ford, of which the basin of the Po is full ; and, 
in his front, he threw up some works. To all appearance 
fronting oddly in a strategic light, he was tactically well 
placed. Though Chiari belonged to Venice and was occupied 
by a Venetian garrison, Eugene put his own troops in it by 
force; he had already violated the Venetian territory by 
marching on the left bank of the Adige, and this seizure of 
Chiari made matters no worse. The enemy lay opposite him 
on the other side of the Oglio. 

Catinat had in many campaigns shown himself to be a 
good officer, and deserved better of his king. Villeroi was a 
favorite at court, and got his command on that score, for he 
had no merit. Eugene is quoted as saying before the cam- 
paign opened, " If Villeroi is my opponent, I shall beat him ; 
if Vendome, I shall fight with him ; if Catinat, he may beat 
me." At that time he knew Catinat better than Vendome. 



LIV. 

EUGENE AGAINST VILLEROI AND VENDOME. 1701-1702. 

Villeroi' s first act was to attack Eugene at Palazzolo. He had forty -five 
thousand men to Eugene's thirty thousand ; but his attack -was weak and with- 
out result ; and in November he went into winter-quarters. The year's cam- 
paign had been a brilliant one on Eugene's part. Early in February he 
made a sudden attack on Cremona, broke in and captured Villeroi, but could 
not hold the city. Vendome was sent to take command of the French army, 
now numbering fifty thousand men. Eugene had been blockading Mantua, but 
Vendome, by a skillful manoeuvre, cut him off from his communications and 
revictualed the place ; then moving around Eugene's flank, he forced him back 
across the Po. A battle ensued at Luzzara, which was drawn, and in Novem- 
ber both armies went into winter-quarters. Vendome held the honors of the 
campaign. One of the greatest generals of this era, John Churchill, now ap- 
peared on the theatre of war. Born in 1650, he early approved himself a good 
soldier, and served with distinction in the English corps under Conde" and 
Turenne. Under James II. and William III. he rose in his chosen profession 
by skill and courage ; was made duke of Marlborough, and finally, in 1701, 
became general-in-chief of the allies in the Netherlands. His campaigns of 
1701 to 1703 were not remarkable. 

Villeroi shortly came upon the scene, and as he was 
ordered, determined to attack the prince before he was rein- 
forced. Catinat, his junior, remained with the army. With 
some forty-five thousand men, Villeroi crossed the Oglio at 
Rudiano on August 28 and 29, and so certain was he of easy 
victory that he neglected to fetch most of his artillery with 
him. Much in accordance with his character, this proved to 
be a foolish error. On the afternoon of September 1 he 
moved on the imperial army, after the barest semblance of 
a reconnoissance. With his thirty thousand men, Eugene had 
made good dispositions, and his outposts gave him early 



682 



VILLEROI DEFEATED. 



notice of the coming of the French. He had three lines, the 
cavalry in the third, and in Chiari, on his left flank, and in a 
number of houses near by, he placed foot and artillery. His 
line faced nearly east, and his right leaned on two brooks. 
His position was strong. Villeroi advanced in good heart, 
never doubting victory ; but his attack on the prince's posi- 
tion, though heartily enough delivered and followed up, was 



PAi_Axz.ouoAj 




Chiari Operation. 

beaten off by the imperial forces, with the loss of over twenty- 
five hundred men and many officers, while Eugene lost little. 
The prince declined to pursue the advantage against the odds 
existing ; Villeroi retired in good order to Urago, near by, 
and intrenched between that place and Castrezato ; and 
Eugene slightly changed his position to one leaning his 
right on Palazzolo, and his left on Chiari. Autumn was at 
hand, and the rest of the year was eaten up by small war, 
conducted by the imperialists with great vigor and constant 
success. 

Each day some expedition against the enemy's foragers, 
outposts or convoys was undertaken, but Eugene, who consid- 
ered that he had won enough for this campaign, did not care 



A BRILLIANT CAMPAIGN. 683 

to risk what he had already gained by uncertain operations on 
a larger scale against so superior a force. Catinat suggested 
some bolder manoeuvres to utilize the French excess of forces, 
but Villeroi was not abreast of them. 

At the end of these small operations, Villeroi, on Novem- 
ber 13, retired across the Oglio below Urago so carefully that 
Eugene had small chance of attacking him, and the French 
went into winter-quarters in the country along the Oglio 
and down to Cremona. The Venetians refused Eugene the 
right to winter on their territory, but as he could not well 
retire to the Tyrol and have all his work to do over again 
next spring, in order to drive the enemy out of the Mantua 
region he undertook operations which secured him a number 
of places, including Marcaria, Rodondesco, Torre d' Oglio, 
Ostiglia, Borgoforte and Ponte Molino, in fact all the towns 
of importance save Mantua and Goito ; he captured Miran- 
dola, where was much material, in the middle of December, 
and Guastalla shortly after ; strengthened the crossings of the 
Oglio, nearly all of which he controlled, cut the French off 
from Mantua, and himself went into cantonments in three 
lines along the Oglio and Mincio, with his left resting on the 
Po. Headquarters were at San Benedetto, and a big outpost 
lay in the Parma territory, while Parma itself was occupied, 
though against the consent of the duke. The imperial gen- 
eral had a good country to victual from and could quickly 
concentrate. The Savoyard army marched back to Pied- 
mont. 

According to the ideas of the day, Prince Eugene's cam- 
paign had been exceedingly brilliant ; he had kept the initia- 
tive at all times ; but it is true that he was aided by the 
limitations of the generals opposed to him. Catinat could not 
cross the Adige, a fact which allowed Eugene all the liberty 
of action he desired on the east bank ; the secret understand- 



684 MANTUA SHUT IN. 

ing with the duke of Savoy, which gave the prince access to 
all the news he desired, was a vital point in his favor ; and 
finally the breaking up of the French army into small detach- 
ments, together with the poor management of Villeroi, made 
in his favor. But he had shown exceptional activity and 
enterprise ; his work in all respects had been able and sol- 
dierly, and the campaign redounds much to his honor. He 
had taken advantage of all the openings the enemy had given 
him, and if we should gauge all generals by the opposi- 
tion they encountered, there would be few great reputations. 
It is rare that great captains have been matched by equal 
talent. 

In 1702 Prince Eugene was again in command of the 
imperial forces with which he had in the previous campaign 
pushed the French back to the Milanese, and which he had 
withdrawn towards winter to the neighborhood of Mantua. 
He had kept up an activity all winter to which the inertness 
of Villeroi formed a great contrast ; he had blockaded Man- 
tua, which at the beginning of January he proceeded with 
some twelve thousand men to shut in more thoroughly ; and 
in order to hold his lines securely, he watched the Po above 
his position with much care, and collected supplies in the 
towns of Brescello, Guastalla, Luzzara, Mirandola and Borgo- 
forte. The enemy considerably outnumbered him; and his 
task in this campaign was to hold himself in Italy rather than 
to push the enemy out of it. General Vaudemont was sta- 
tioned in the Parma country. 

On the 1st of February Prince Eugene carried out a 
scheme which he had for some time had in view, against the 
fortress of Cremona, where the bulk of the French were sta- 
tioned, and where Villeroi had his headquarters. In his pay 
was an admirable corps of spies, from whom he got much 
information. By corrupting a priest, whose house was near 



VILLEROI CAPTURED. 685 

the north city wall, a few imperial soldiers got admitted 
through a drain into the city, and at the preconcerted hour of 
3 A. M., opened one of the adjacent gates to a force headed by 
Prince Eugene. Within a few minutes the latter was inside, 
with two thousand infantry and somewhat more cavalry, and 
before the garrison was aware of any danger the place was 
taken, and Villeroi, whose quarters were close at hand, was 
made a prisoner. 

But the event was not as fortunate as the beginning. Gen- 
eral Vaudemont (the son, for the father was serving under 
Villeroi) had been instructed to aid the stratagem from 
Parma by attacking and taking the Cremona bridge-head 
from the south, and thus opening communication with Eugene 
and an outlet for retreat ; but he failed to do this, and when 
the scheme was on the very eve of success, the garrison got 
under arms, and during the whole day energetically fought to 
expel the enemy. Finally the French gained their point, and 
Eugene, with a loss of twelve hundred men, was obliged to 
retire. The marquis of Crequi was on the march to help 
the garrison, and had he come up, Eugene might have been 
captured himself ; but on hearing a report that Cremona 
had been taken, Crequi pusillanimously turned back without 
attempting to verify the rumor, and Eugene got away by the 
Margaret gate on the east, crossed the Oglio, and retired to 
camp with his prisoner. 

When, on March 1, Vendome, the successor of Villeroi, 
arrived in Cremona and took command of the French army 
lying on the Adda, he first sat down to wait for some twenty- 
five thousand reinforcements to arrive, and then planned to 
march to the Mincio, place himself on the communications of 
Eugene with the Tyrol, and either force him to battle, or 
compel him to throw up the blockade of Mantua. While 
waiting his accessions and the proper moment to act, he made 



686 



VENDOME IN ITALY. 




an attempt to help Mantua by moving on Eugene's position 
on the Po ; but Eugene outmanoeuvred him, met him at every 
point, and not only held fast the blockade, but kept up 
a series of annoying raids into the Milanese and Cremona 
districts. 

Louis Joseph, Duke of Yendome, was born in 1654, had 
early served in the Gardes du Corps in the Netherlands, 
under Turenne on the Rhine, and 
under Conde in Flanders. He be- 
came familiar with Italy by serving 
as a junior in the campaigns con- 
ducted by Catinat. In 1695 he com- 
manded the French army in Spain, 
freed Palamos, and captured Barce- 
lona. A splendid soldier, in private 
life he was shiftless, indecorous and 
showed little ambition; it required 
the stimulus of arms to rouse his naturally indolent nature ; 
and sometimes even this failed to do so. In the field he 
often showed determination unsurpassed, as well as a marked 
gallantry and intelligence ; but he was not always careful to 
guard the secret of his operations. 

Having had his forces raised to over fifty thousand men, 
Vendome left Cremona well garrisoned and the line of the 
Adda and Po sufficiently posted, and with twenty thousand 
men marched, May 12, over the Oglio at Pontevico, crossed 
the Mella, May 15, at Manerbio, turned to the right over the 
Chiese at Medole, and reached Goito May 23. This hand- 
some march, made before Eugene could do aught to interrupt 
or neutralize it, was a clear check to the imperial commander, 
for it not only cut him off from his main line of communica- 
tions, — the direct road to the Tyrol, — but at the same time 
raised the blockade of Mantua on the north. The prince at 



Vendome. 



•r 



MANTUA RELIEVED. 687 

once recognized his situation. He might readily have been 
drawn into fatal manoeuvres or a still more fatal battle ; but 
he quietly withdrew to his lower Mantua lines with troops 
which had been reinforced up to thirty-nine thousand men, 
took up a strong position, May 17, near Montanara and Cur- 
tatone, intrenched it, and here still held Mantua in a spe- 
cies of blockade. But Vendome's presence in superior force 
between Goito and Mantua could not fail to become danger- 
ous to the imperial army, and Eugene concluded to draw in 
his forces from the towns surrounding Mantua, and to watch 
for further developments while victualing his forces over the 
bridge at Borgoforte from the magazines which he had so 
judiciously established in the Modena country on the other 
side of the Po. From Brescello to Ostiglia his possession of 
the Po was made secure. 

Upon this withdrawal of Eugene, Vendome was enabled to 
revictual Mantua, and then took up his post opposite Eugene 
near Rivalto, where both armies remained in situ for a month, 
indulging only in small war and cannonading. An attempt 
to duplicate the capture of Villeroi by seizing Yendome in his 
quarters at Rivalto came so close to success as to make the 
French general careful where he established himself. 

Eugene's position was peculiar. He stood between the Po 
and the Mincio, the enemy, who outnumbered him, in his 
front, and Mantua on his right, against whose sorties he now 
had to intrench himself. The neutral Venetians held the 
line of the Adige with twenty-six thousand men for their own 
protection, and Eugene could have a line of retreat on its left 
bank by marching over their territory ; but his original line 
of retreat was gone. Now again heavily reinforced from 
Spain, Vendome was anxious to oust Eugene from his posi- 
tion ; but, as he did not like to make a front attack, he left 
Vaudemont with twenty-three thousand men in his Rivalto 



688 VENDOME ACTIVE. 

lines astride the imperial communications, and boldly started, 
July 7, with the van of other twenty-three thousand, towards 
Cremona and Casal Maggiore, proposing to cross the Po and 
by a flank attack seek to cut off his opponent from his 
Modena holdings and capture his magazines. Thus, he 
thought, he would force him into a situation which would 
compel him to leave Italy. His object in marching so far up 
the Po as Cremona was perhaps to meet Philip V. of Spain, 
who was coming on a visit to the allied armies. 

Eugene guessed his opponent's intention, and increased 
his detachments at Borgoforte and Brescello, where he had 
bridges over the Po, and at Guastalla. 

Crossing the river, July 14, in two columns, at Cremona 
and Casal Maggiore, Vendome met at Santa Vittoria some 
imperial horse which Eugene sent out to watch the operation, 
beat it with a loss of six hundred men, captured Eeggio, 
Modena and Carpi, and having got together thirty-six thou- 
sand troops, marched to Luzzara, August 15, hoping to seize 
on Eugene's bridges over the Po. He was doing brilliant 
work. 

Matters looked threatening for Eugene. It seemed as if 
battle with a superior enemy was his only outlet, and on this 
he determined. By skillfully deceiving Vaudemont, he with- 
drew most of his forces from his front, crossed the Po at Bor- 
goforte August 1, reinforced his army from garrisons up to 
twenty-six thousand men and fifty-seven guns, also marched 
straight on Luzzara, and on August 3 reached Sailetto, just 
south of the crossing. Strong garrisons were left in his mag- 
azine towns. 

Vendome had called on the commander of the place to 
surrender, and on refusal had taken the town but not the 
citadel ; and then, heedless of Eugene, prepared to camp near 
by. The old accounts of this battle are a good deal confused, 



A DESPERATE BATTLE. 



689 



and the old charts do not show the topography of to-day. 
Along the Po near Luzzara there was said to be a canal or 
an embankment to arrest the frequent inundations of the 
river, and high enough to conceal a considerable army. The 
old charts call it the Zero Canal. At all events, it is certain 
that the country was much cut up by embankments, dikes, 
ditches, hedges, patches of woods, so much so that only care- 
ful scouting would discover an enemy. On this terrain 
Eugene, who with his entire force of infantry and cavalry 
had advanced in two columns along the Po, and now lay in a 
sort of ambush, hoped to fall suddenly on the French when 
they should go into camp, as he was advised by his scouts 
that they were 
about to do. Ven- 
dome's people were 
exceedingly care- 
less in outpost 
duty, and the 
French army had 
marched up and 
was preparing to 
camp without dis- 
covering the pres- 
ence of the ene- 
my. Just before 
Eugene was ready 
to debouch from hiding and fall upon the French, Vendome, 
by the curiosity of an outpost commander, was fortunate 
enough to discover the ambush, and by the time Eugene had 
got his men through the difficult country and into line, so 
had Vendome. It was 5 P. m. The imperialists of the right 
wing worked their way through the many obstacles and fell 
on the French left with great fury ; but they were met by 




.-''? _ i PL a ACe._ i _ ^staked >^ Vl 



VE.NDOME.S. COLUMNS OF MAF^CH 



Battle of Luzzara. 



690 A DISPUTED VICTORY. 

equal gallantry, and for hours a bloody struggle was main- 
tained. Eugene reported that in several regiments every offi- 
cer fell, and that the fighting was kept up under command 
of the sergeants. In the centre Vendome opposed Eugene, 
but the latter gained some ground. On the left the imperial 
gain was more marked, as the ground was more open and the 
cavalry could better operate. In every respect it was a 
fiercely contested battle, but without any special show of 
grand-tactics. Up to past midnight the struggle went on 
along the line in places, breaking out at intervals on either 
side ; and it had been hot enough to cost each army some two 
thousand killed, and on the French side four thousand and 
on the imperial side two thousand wounded. Eugene had by 
no means made the gain he had anticipated, which was to 
drive the French from his vicinity; nor indeed had he lost 
the battle, for both sides claimed a victory. 

Eugene, who is unusually accurate in his reports, says that 
he kept the field and collected all his wounded, while the 
French were driven more than one thousand paces back from 
it, a statement which seems to vouch for an imperial success. 
Both armies remained near enough together to indulge in 
cannonading next day. At all events, Eugene had accom- 
plished his end by putting a summary stop to Vendome's 
advance and to the danger of being driven out of the Modena 
country. 

Vendome ordered Vaudemont to blockade Borgoforte ; but 
Eugene kept free enough to send his light horse out on 
raids, even so far as into the Milanese. One enterprising 
raid is worth mentioning. A party of six hundred hussars 
under General Davia started from camp, rode up the Po, 
crossed the Enza, Parma, Taro, Kura and Trebbia, seized the 
bridge at Arena, crossed, forced a heavy contribution on 
Pa via, and marched on and into Milan. Thence easterly 



IN FAVOR OF VENDOME. 691 

they crossed the Adda at Cassano, the Oglio at Calcio, the 
Mincio at Valleggio, and arrived safe and laden with enor- 
mous booty at Ostiglia. This was the sort of work Eugene's 
tremendous vitality was apt to inspire in his subordinates. 
For fifty-five days the armies stood en face near Luzzara, 
and Vendome only captured Guastalla. Eugene was too weak 
to do more than hold his own ; but Vendome was able suc- 
cessively to seize several of Eugene's Modena magazines, 
though not Mirandola. He made an attempt on this place 
by moving on Bondanello on the Secchia ; but while on the 
march to this latter place, Eugene quietly drew in most of 
the Borgoforte garrison, rapidly moved across the Secchia, 
and on November 8 drew up to defend the river ; and though 
Vendome had much the larger force, he declined to attack. 
But he shortly got Borgoforte, whose garrison was thus 
depleted. 

Prince Eugene attempted later to gain possession of the 
Guastalla bridge, as well as made an attack on Mantua ; but 
failing in both efforts, he gave up all his holdings on the left 
bank of the Po and went into winter-quarters in the vicinity 
of Mirandola. The French, in November, also put their 
fifty-six thousand men (not counting garrisons) into winter- 
quarters, with headquarters in Guastalla. 

The campaign had been decidedly in favor of Vendome, 
who with his superior fox^ces had conducted it with much abil- 
ity, and may be said to have gained substantial repute by his 
boldness and intelligence. Prince Eugene, though to be 
sure his army was but half that of his opponent, had been 
forced back to the right bank of the Po and been cooped up 
in the Mirandola country ; but he had not been driven out of 
Italy ; and all his operations were active and able. Though 
Vendome had accomplished more, yet Eugene had shown the 
greater ability. An exceptional circumstance in the cam- 



692 EUGENE'S THEORIES. 

paigns of 1701-1702 is that Prince Eugene called on Austria 
for scarcely any support. He built his road from the Tyrol 
down, and subsisted his men on the enemy's territory. He 
so disposed his magazines that being cut off from his direct 
communications with the Tyrol by no means fatally compro- 
mised him. All this was an unusual thing in those days. 
The operations had cost Austria little in men or material. 
Eugene had, considering his force and the fact that his oppo- 
nent was one of the best soldiers of the day, conducted a 
very handsome campaign. Perhaps the most noteworthy fact 
of the 1702 campaign is that Eugene grasped and acted on 
the theory that the weaker of two generals must never await 
attack, but himself assume the offensive. This was Freder- 
ick's great power; and Eugene distinctly exhibited it. At 
Luzzara he advanced on the enemy ; during the whole cam- 
paign his activity in small war never relaxed ; and he always 
managed to keep a central position with interior lines. He 
was recalled to Vienna, received with enthusiasm, and made 
president of the imperial council of war. During the suc- 
ceeding year he was not in the field. 

There had come upon the theatre of the War of the Span- 
ish Succession a soldier as remarkable as Eugene, and one 
with whom his name was to be imperishably coupled. John 
Churchill was born in Devonshire July 5, 1650, thirteen 
years before his colleague, his father being a royalist, his 
mother a daughter of Sir Francis Drake. Educated at St. 
Paul's school, he entered the army at sixteen years old, under 
the patronage of the duke of York, and first saw service in 
the war against Tangiers, where he was distinguished as a 
volunteer in all hazardous exploits. In 1672, at the begin- 
ning of the second Netherlands War, he was captain in the 
English corps, and at Nymwegen Turenne highly and justly 
complimented him. A certain position under a French officer 



MARLBOROUGH'S EARLY WARS. 



693 




had been lost by a Dutch attack. Turenne is said to have 
bet a champagne supper that " son hel Anglais" with half 
the troops which had just been driven back, would take it ; 
and Churchill gallantly won him his bet. Next year he 
earned the public thanks of Louis XIV. for services at the 
siege of Maestricht, was soon 
made colonel, and, as such, in 
1674, served under Turenne 
on the Rhine. 

Four years after, he parti- 
cipated in the campaign in 
Flanders, and for three years 
succeeding was with the ban- 
ished duke of York in the 
Netherlands and Belgium. 
His fidelity earned him his 
baronetcy and promotion ; and Marlborough. 

when the duke became James II. he was made peer and 
French ambassador. Engaged at Sedgmoor against the in- 
surgents, he afterwards went over to William III., and was 
made lieutenant-general and duke of Marlborough in 1686. 

At the battle of Walcourt (1689) against the French, in 
the Netherlands, he showed marked skill, and the king desired 
him to go to Ireland in 1690, to serve against James II. But 
Marlborough declined to go thither until after James had 
left that country, when he drove back the insurgents in Cork, 
Kinsale and Ulster. Notwithstanding his treasonable corre- 
spondence with James, the king kept him in favor, and took 
him to the Netherlands in 1691 ; and though in the next year 
he fell from favor and was imprisoned in the Tower, he was 
again called to court, showered with honors and dignities, 
made captain-general, and sent to the Netherlands as pleni- 
potentiary, in 1701. Queen Anne, on her accession, com- 



694 COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. 

missioned him general-in-chief of the English forces, and, in 
1702, conferred the Garter on him. 

Although, under the common belief that the divine right 
of ruling confers like military skill, there were many claim- 
ants to the command of the allied armies, — the king of 
Prussia, the Archduke Charles, the elector of Hanover, the 
duke of Zell, and ' especially Prince George of Denmark, 
husband of Queen Anne, — the Dutch estates insisted upon 
their own choice, and the duke of Marlborough, in 1702, was 
made commander-in-chief of the allies in the Netherlands. 
For this action there were two good reasons : the confidence 
of the Dutch in his ability, and their desire to have a com- 
mander whom their field deputies could control. Owing to 
political complications, Marlborough did not reach his army 
till midsummer, the earl of Athlone having meanwhile been 
engaged in the siege of Kaiserswbrth, which fell June 15, 
and in checking Marshal Boufflers' raid on Nymwegen. 
Three weeks later Marlborough crossed the Maas at Grave 
with his sixty thousand men, made up of English, German 
and Dutch troops. He was anxious for battle with Marshal 
Boufflers, who had some forty thousand men, but the Dutch 
field deputies held him back, and he was reduced to a cam- 
paign of sieges. Capturing Venlo, Boermond, Stevensweert 
and Liittich (Liege), he forced the French behind the 
Mehaigne. This was already a marked gain ; it put the situ- 
ation in the Netherlands on a new footing ; the French were 
cut off from what they had deemed their highway, the Rhine, 
and a secure waterway was open from the Dutch ports to 
the army of the allies at the front, — no mean success. The 
allied position moreover threatened Brussels and Cologne, 
and Marlborough began to be looked on as the saviour of 
the Netherlands. Had he been given his own way, he might 
have spared much future waste of lives and treasure ; for 



UNIMPORTANT CAMPAIGNS. 695 

Marlborough belongs to those generals who only now and 
then were given an opportunity of doing their very best ; of 
whom it cannot be said how great they might have become 
had they possessed unlimited power. 

Next year (1703) was a repetition of the same story. 
Holland at that day bristled with fortifications, built under 
the eye of the most distinguished engineers, the Frenchman 
Vauban and the Dutchman Coehorn at their head, and the 
presence of these interfered with free manoeuvring. A sin- 
gle fortress in its rear may not be dangerous to an army ; 
but when they are so numerous that detachments from their 
garrisons can make up a body able to threaten the commu- 
nications of an army advancing beyond their lines, greater 
caution is required ; and unless a commander had sufficient 
troops to detail large observation parties for each strong 
place, it could scarcely be deemed wise to leave them behind 
him. This view, then universal, was warmly espoused by the 
Dutch deputies. They constantly restrained Marlborough, 
who had designs on Antwerp and Ostende, and who in any 
event was inclined to fight as the best military policy ; and 
he was now fain to be content with besieging Bonn. Villeroi, 
who had returned from Italy, sought meanwhile to interfere 
with Marlborough's siege by an advance on Maestricht ; but 
Bonn fell May 15, — in season to allow Marlborough, who 
with his lieutenant Overkirk had fifty -five thousand men, to 
head him off. Villeroi and Boufflers, however, quite nega- 
tived his attempt in June on Antwerp, in which operation 
Boufflers beat a large force of the Dutch who formed the 
right of the concentrically operating forces, and Marlborough 
had no success. Later he fell back behind the Maas, and in 
August and Sej)tember took Huy and Limburg, and the 
Prussians, under Count Lottum, Geldern. 

This campaign is neither of especial interest, nor does it 



696 THE DUTCH DEPUTIES. 

reflect any great credit on its management ; but from giving 
it its trivial character Marlborough must be absolved ; for 
the Dutch deputies were constantly at his elbow, and their 
view of the military necessities of the case savored of astig- 
matism. Tired of his slow-moving masters, — for he saw 
other generals winning victories, and felt conscious of his 
own power to do the like, — Marlborough determined to 
march into Germany in 1704, and there conduct his cam- 
paign. It was evident to all that Bavaria was the key of 
the theatre of war. 




French Cannon. (16th Century.) 



LV. 

VILLAKS. 1703. 

In 1703 Vendome opposed Stahremberg in Italy, but the latter outmanoeu- 
vred him, and finally, Savoy having joined the allies, made a splendid march 
around his position to Piedmont. On the Rhine Villars opened the campaign 
by a brilliant foray. Crossing at Hiiningen, he marched down the river to the 
Stollhofen lines, capturing everything on the way. Later, he again crossed, 
advanced to the Danube country, joined the elector of Bavaria, and proposed 
to march on Vienna ; but the elector declined the operation as too hazardous. 
Some interesting manoeuvres occurred between him and the prince of Baden 
when Villars was succeeded by Marsin. He had operated with boldness and 
skill. In this campaign occurred the first bayonet charge on record. Bavaria 
was looked on as the battle-ground for 1704, and both France and the allies 
made preparations to concentrate their efforts there. 

In the Italian campaign of 1703 Vendome did not do him- 
self the same credit as in the previous one. His opponent 
was Count Stahremberg, whose position on the right bank of 
the Po, where Eugene had left the army, was one of much 
difficulty, as his communications with the Tyrol and Austria 
ran across the Po at Ostiglia, the Adige at Castelbaldo, and 
up to Triente, a treacherous route, full of obstacles, through 
Venetian territory, and easy to interrupt. Vendome had 
sixty-two thousand men to Stahremberg's twenty odd thou- 
sand, and a decided advance in force on his opponent at 
any suitable point must have resulted in crushing him. But 
his natural love of ease appearing this year to get the better 
of him, Vendome preferred slower operations, and divided 
his forces. With twenty-seven thousand men, he himself 
marched to Ostiglia and sent his brother, who was his second 
in command, with twenty thousand on the south of the Po 



698 STAHREMBERG'S ACTIVITY. 

to the Secchia, behind which lay Stahremberg. The latter, 
well aware of the movements through his scouts, carefully 
held Ostiglia, covered the Po bridge with a suitable force, 
and waited. As Vendome approached on the north of him, 
and the younger Vendome had actually crossed the Secchia, 
which operation Stahremberg did not attempt to prevent, and 
as General Alberghatti with four thousand men had pene- 
trated to Finale on the south of him, Stahremberg opened 
the sluices of the Po at Ostiglia, laid the entire country 
under water so as to prevent Vendome's advance, and turn- 
ing sharply on Alberghatti, gave him a severe beating, and 
again took up his post in the Mirandola region. Quite 
unsettled by this unexpected and original proceeding, the 
French retired up the Po along both banks, and Vendome 
remained inactive for six weeks. 

The duke of Savoy, with whom Prince Eugene had been 
sedulously laboring, now declared for the allies. This proved 
a great gain : it secured the passes in the Alps against falling 
into the hands of the French, and made more difficult their 
reinforcing their Danube army from Italy. Vendome, after 
a fruitless because indolent march to join the elector of 
Bavaria in the Tyrol for an advance on Vienna, — the emas- 
culated outcome of an excellent scheme of Villars, — returned 
to Italy. He had large forces, and his position between Stah- 
remberg and the duke of Savoy would have enabled him to 
operate successfully against each in turn ; but he did nothing, 
despite his superiority, and finally went into winter-quarters 
at Asti, leaving his brother to face Stahremberg. 

The Austrian now saw his chance, and executed the one 
manoeuvre which makes this campaign worth a notice. It 
was a fine one. He concluded that the war in Italy could be 
conducted to better advantage if he should join hands with 
the duke of Savoy than by operating in two bodies, each of 



BAVARIA AND BADEN. 699 

which, was too weak. A part of Vendome's force was in his 
front ; but, throwing up his communications with the Tyrol, 
as well as his Mirandola magazine, he moved around the 
French left, deceived the enemy as to his intentions, pushed 
rapidly up the left bank of the Po, and joined the duke in 
Nizza della Paglia in Piedmont. The French hovered on 
his flank and rear, not infrequently placing him in grievous 
danger, but Stahremberg turned and twisted with rapidity 
and skill, and forestalled all their efforts. This operation 
was entirely sound, but it was quite outside of the usual 
system and deserves all praise. Stahremberg was the hero 
of the Italian campaign of 1703. 

At the opening of the War of Succession, as above ob- 
served, Louis XIV., with his overwhelming forces and allies, 
missed his best opportunity in not taking the offensive. In 
1703 he determined to repair his error. The theatre of the 
German campaign was again curiously divided, for Prince 
Louis of Baden was the ally of the emperor, while the elector 
of Bavaria was allied to France, thus placing both Baden and 
Bavaria between two fires. Resolved to conduct no longer a 
war of sieges, Louis XIV. conceived the brilliant strategic 
plan of a march on Vienna down the Danube, utilizing his 
connection with the elector of Bavaria to afford him a second- 
ary base. Simple as the problem appears to us, the scheme 
really showed strong penetration on the part of Louis and 
his counselors. 

Louis was to begin by uniting an army of thirty thousand 
men under Villars with that of the elector of Bavaria, who 
also had thirty thousand men in the field, and twenty odd 
thousand in garrison in his various cities : Ingolstadt, Neu- 
markt, Munich, Augsburg and smaller towns. Villars was 
on the upper Rhine at Hiiningen and Neuenburg, while Tal- 
lard with twelve thousand men was on the Moselle, holding 



700 



FRENCH AND IMPERIAL PLANS. 



the border fortresses. The plan of the emperor, on the other 
hand, was to attack the elector and sunder him from the 
French alliance before Villars came up ; and for this purpose 
he collected on the left bank of the Danube nine thousand 
men under Marshal Styrum, and twenty thousand on the 
right bank under Marshal Schlick. Prince Louis, with 
thirty thousand imperialists, occupied the right bank of the 
Rhine, from the Lake of Constance to the Stollhofen for- 
tified line, strung along the whole distance in small de- 
tachments ; held Breisach and Freiburg, and posted his main 
body on the Kinzig near Kehl, where 
he dominated the crossing. A body 
of nine thousand men was ordered 
from Holland to the Moselle to hold 
head against the French at that 
point, and to draw them from opera- 
tions on the Rhine. 

Louis Hector de Villars came of a 
noble family, but poor and out of 
favor. He was born in 1653, and 
at twenty distinguished himself at 
the siege of Maestricht by such ex- 
ceptional bravery that he attracted the king's eye. After the 
bloody battle of Senef, he was promoted on the field to the 
command of a cavalry regiment. He was ambassador to 
Vienna in 1678, and again later, and in the Netherlands war 
in 1689, he rose to be field-marshal. He served under Ville- 
roi and Catinat, and in October, 1702, won a handsome vic- 
tory at Friedlingen over the prince of Baden. He now for 
the first time received command of an important army. 

Villars opened the campaign in February by a brilliant 
coup. He crossed the Rhine at Huningen and Neuenburg, 
marched rapidly down the right bank, passed under the very 




Villars. 



VILLARS' FORAY. 701 

walls of Breisach and Freiburg, beat a body of nine thousand 
men on the Elz, and drove the imperial forces, which were 
yet in cantonments, to take refuge in the Stollhofen lines. 
He then took Offenburg, with the abundant supplies of mate- 
rial and victual of the prince of Baden there lying, left a 
force to observe Kehl, which capitulated March 10, moved 
back up the Kinzig valley, and made another big capture in 
Haslach. 

The emperor, quite aghast at this sudden irruption into his 
ally's territory, hurried some troops from the Danube to Swa- 
bia. Villars, one third of whose troops were without mus- 
kets, and who it was purposed should march to Bavaria, 
deferred this advance, occupied Kehl, and retired across the 
Rhine. His brilliant raid, for such it was, formed a curious 
contrast to the slow and tedious operations of the other 
generals of this year. 

This foray of Villars was really what enabled the elector of 
Bavaria to turn against the imperial marshals, Styrum and 
Schlick; and to beat their depleted forces in detail in the 
Inn-Danube region, an operation which he conducted with 
marked vigor, winning in two important engagements and 
pushing the enemy well back. Had he operated with his 
entire fifty thousand men, instead of leaving nearly half of 
them dormant in his fortresses, his success would have been 
of more value. As it was, the enemy's forces were not defi- 
nitely crippled, for the imperial generals had as many men as 
he had put afield. 

Not long after, Villars, who had got his army into better 
shape, to counteract the renewed efforts of the imperial forces 
on the Danube, added Tallard's Moselle force to his own, and 
crossed the Rhine at Strasburg with fifty thousand men, pur- 
posing to capture the Stollhofen lines. But Prince Louis 
met him with such good countenance that he gave up this 



VILLARS AND THE ELECTOR. 703 

plan and, leaving Tallard to observe the lines, he moved with 
thirty thousand up the Kinzig and down the Esch to Tut- 
lingen, through the Danube valley, and May 10 joined the 
elector of Bavaria at Eiedlingen on that river. The two 
armies numbered sixty thousand men. Unable to forestall 
it, the prince of Baden cleverly matched this manoeuvre by 
leaving fifteen thousand of his forces at Stollhofen, and by 
moving with sixteen thousand men to Stuttgart, where he 
joined Styrum, who had advanced to meet him, and thus 
made up an army of thirty-six thousand men. 

Villars now proposed to the elector to carry out the mas- 
terly plan already mentioned, by a march with their sixty 
thousand men down the valley of the Danube, straight on 
Vienna, leaving Tallard to hold head to the prince of Baden. 
But the elector, fearing that Tallard might fail in this duty 
and that his own territory might be devastated meanwhile, 
was unwilling to enter into so extended a plan. Villars then 
suggested a march through the Tyrol, whither Vendome could 
send twenty thousand reinforcements from Italy. The first 
suggested march was a bold one to make ; it might have put 
an end to the war; but speed alone could lend it success. 
The second necessitated waiting for the Italian contingent, 
and this forfeited the most essential element. 

Uncertain of himself, the elector was intractable with Vil- 
lars, and this enterprising general was fain to lie still and see 
the precious opportunity slip away. Neither plan was car- 
ried out. Villars placed himself on the left bank of the Dan- 
ube between Lauingen and Dillingen, to protect Bavaria, 
while in June the elector marched to the Tyrol to meet the 
French forces which should come from Italy under Vendome ; 
but these, as we have seen, never reached him, and he got no 
farther. Meanwhile the duke of Burgundy, with a fresh 
army of nearly forty thousand men, operated against the 



704 INTERESTING MANCEUVRES. 

Stollliof en lines. There was no lack of men ; a leader was 
wanting in the French army. 

Unwilling to attack Villars in his strong position at Lau- 
ingen, and having had a division, which he sent to manoeu- 
vre against the French, beaten at one of the near-by Danube 
crossings, the prince of Baden conceived a bold plan for turn- 
ing Villars out of his holding, and for compromising the 
elector as well. Leaving Styrum and twenty thousand men 
to watch Villars at Lauingen, he marched with twenty-seven 
thousand up the river to above Ulm, crossed, moved rapidly 
on Augsburg and took it ; and then assumed a strong position 
between the Lech and the Wertach, where he cut asunder the 
two armies of the enemy. 

Although this movement compelled the elector to withdraw 
from his advance on the Tyrol, it was a mistake, in that the 
prince of Baden himself divided his forces ; and if the elector 
had speeded his return, Villars and he between them could 
have crushed the prince with his smaller force beyond a 
doubt. But the elector was too slow to cut off Prince Louis, 
who on his approach retired north from Augsburg ; and hav- 
ing joined Villars, the bulk of both allied armies retired to 
Donauworth, where their efforts were now devoted to keeping 
the imperial armies apart. 

Shortly after, in September, Marshal Styrum moved to 
Hochstadt on the left bank of the Danube, expecting to join 
the prince of Baden somewhere west of the mouth of the 
Lech. Villars and the elector determined to destroy him 
before he could complete the junction. Sending from Dil- 
lingen, by a circuit, a force under General Jusson to attack 
Styrum's rear, the Franco-Bavarian army, on September 19, 
prepared to fall upon his front. But Jusson advanced on 
Styrum too early and was thrust back, and when Villars and 
the elector reached his lines and drove Styrum in, Jusson 



VILLA RS RELIEVED. 705 

made no second attack, but allowed the imperialist to slip 
from between the two armies and retire to Nordlingen. Vil- 
lars' dispositions, though smartly carried out, thus failed to 
accomplish the destruction of the imperial force ; Styrum 
still aimed to join the prince ; but as he could not well do so 
in Bavaria, he sought to move up river. 

Leaving a body on the Lech to cover Bavaria and to insure 
against a junction of the enemy there, Villars marched with 
twenty-five thousand men to Wieblingen, on the Iller near 
Ulm, to head off the prince in his efforts to reach Styrum 
further up the Danube. The prince marched to Kempten, a 
cross-roads on the east of the upper Iller, if perchance, by a 
long circuit, he might accomplish his purpose ; and Villars, 
reinforced up to fifty-four thousand men, marched to Mem- 
mingen, resolved to force battle on him as a preventive meas- 
ure ; but the prince kept well ahead of him, and fearing 
battle at a disadvantage, passed on a line well to the south of 
Villars, and made good his retreat to Leutkirch on the other 
side of the Iller. 

Villars still followed, with a view of forcing him to battle 
before Styrum could come up ; but his relations with the 
elector had become so strained that while he was preparing a 
fresh manoeuvre he was relieved of his command. His suc- 
cessor, Marshal Marsin, put the troops into winter-quarters on 
the Lech, an example which was followed by all the armies. 
The prince of Baden finally joined Styrum, who marched 
west from Nordlingen, and went into winter-quarters covering 
a wide territory, between Lake Constance and the Neckar. 

France lost much in removing Villars. It was such excep- 
tional boldness and energy as his which promised to accom- 
plish the results which would tell in her favor. Had Villars 
been unhampered, we must conclude from what he did under 
unfavorable circumstances that he would have worsted the 



706 FIRST BAYONET CHARGE. 

average generals opposed to him, and have placed France 
much nearer to success. His 1703 campaign was a remark- 
able one ; it showed great ability, singular push, and a decided 
preference for fighting over manoeuvres. Moreover he was 
opposed by an active and intelligent soldier, the prince of 
Baden. 

The operations on the Rhine, this year, were not important, 
nor characterized by anything out of the ordinary, except the 
first bayonet charge on record, not preceded by fire. The 
prince of Hesse was advancing on Speyer, at the head of 
twenty-four thousand men, purposing to relieve Landau, 
when Field-Marshal Tallard, who had just blockaded the 
place, went out to meet him with nineteen thousand. As the 
prince was crossing the Speyerbach, Tallard's column reached 
the stream. Seizing the instant, and without waiting to form 
line of battle, Tallard ployed his marching columns into col- 
umn of attack, and just as they were, charged in on the 
enemy with the bayonet. The result was a brilliant victory. 
It is odd to note that military critics looked on this charge as 
a gross error, an inexcusable variation from the rules of the 
art, and universally condemned it ; though had Tallard com- 
manded pikemen merely, the charge would have been his only 
resource, and would have been considered bold and skillful. 
In any event, Tallard had won, and concluded his work by 
the capture of Landau, to the confusion — in our eyes — 
of the critics. 

In the campaign of 1703 the emperor had been sadly ham- 
pered by the rebellion in Hungary, which monopolized many 
troops and more attention. The year had made the French 
masters of the middle Rhine crossings. Landau and Neu- 
Breisach enabled them to debouch into the enemy's country, 
and Bavaria was a salient thrust forward into it by which 
to reach and manoeuvre on the Danube. In the Netherlands 



PLANS FOR 1704. 707 

France had lost nothing. The allies in 1704 needed the 
most brilliant of success to retrieve their cause ; and thanks 
to Marlborough and Eugene, they won it. 

The alliance of Bavaria was particularly important to both 
contestants, and at the opening of the campaign the generals 
on both sides looked upon that electorate as the objective and 
probable theatre of operations. Elsewhere the campaign was 
less marked. For France, Bavarian amity was useful because 
it would keep the war off French territory, and made a sec- 
ondary base for the French operations against the emperor. 
To the emperor, Bavaria was necessary because by occupying 
it he robbed France of a strong ally, and from Bavaria, with 
Baden in his favor, he could carry the war into Fiance, 
instead of seeing it waged near or within his own frontiers. 
Bavaria was ill placed, being the battle-ground of both con- 
testants. 

It was planned for 1704 to send Tallard and Marsin with 
fifty thousand men into Bavaria, where, added to the elector's 
troops, there would be ninety-five thousand men, and it was 
hoped that such a force might make a decided impression on 
the war. But Tallard was anxious to operate alone, and the 
king was prevailed on to order Marsin, who had wintered 
in the Augsburg country, to march towards the sources of 
the Danube, take ten thousand men over from Tallard, and 
with this reduced force to operate with the elector against 
the emperor. Tallard, thus left to himself, proposed to 
manoeuvre against the Stollhofen lines, and actually opened 
operations. 

If the imperial generals had concentrated their forces on 
the middle Rhine against either Tallard or Marsin, they 
could have beaten the French marshals separately. The 
prince of Baden did assemble thirty-five thousand men at 
Eiothweil, and strove to cut Marsin off from Bavaria ; but he 



708 



MARLBOROUGH ORDERED TO GERMANY. 



was slow and undecided, and instead of moying on Tutt- 
lingen, so as to reach Marsin's flank and rear, he marched to 
Villingen, and thus opened to Marsin the main road to 
Bavaria ; after which he could only follow him up and take 
post at Munderkingen on the Danube, while Marsin took 
position at Ulm. Meanwhile Marlborough was ordered from 
the Netherlands to Germany. 




Cannon Royal. (16th Century.) 



LVI. 

MARLBOROUGH AND EUGENE. 1704. 

The Dutch deputies had tied Marlborough's hands in the Netherlands ; hut 
in 1704 he got their consent to move to Bavaria, marched unopposed up the 
Rhine, crossed, joined Louis of Baden, and reached the Danube with sixty 
thousand men. Eugene remained at Stollhofen to contain the French, while 
Marlborough and Baden opposed the elector of Bavaria and Marsin. Moving 
down to Donauworth, Marlborough captured the Schellenberg with excessive 
loss, crossed to the south bank, and moved on Augsburg. Tallard now left the 
Rhine and marched to the relief of Marsin and the elector ; Eugene at once 
followed, leaving part of his force in Stollhofen, for without him the allies 
might be overwhelmed. The French withdrew from Augsburg to the left 
bank of the Danube; Baden besieged Ingolstadt, and Marlborough and 
Eugene joined near Donauworth. They had fifty-six thousand men ; the 
French and Bavarians perhaps sixty thousand. Near Hochstadt (or Blen- 
heim) the two armies came into accidental collision, and both were willing to 
fight. 

Marlborough had determined to shake the Dutch 
shackles from his wrists, and his skillful diplomacy proved 
equal to the task. The Dutch estates first gave their consent 
to his advancing up and across the Rhine, and later, if he 
could neutralize Villeroi, to his continuing on to Bavaria. 
The emperor, with the Hungarian rebellion and the French 
successes of 1703, was in ill case ; Vienna seemed to be 
threatened ; and this danger to one of the principal allies was 
peril to all. With reinforcements Marlborough had got 
thirty thousand English troops in the Low Countries, fifty 
thousand in all under his immediate command ; with sixteen 
thousand men, on the opening of operations early in May, he 
crossed the Meuse at Maestricht, proceeded to Bonn and up 



710 MARLBOROUGH'S MARCH. 

the left bank of the Ehine, passed at Coblentz May 26, 
after taking in enough garrisons to nearly double his force ; 
and on June 3 had marched to Ladenburg on the Neckar 
near its mouth, where he crossed a few days later. His 
progress, according to modern ideas, had been quite slow, but 
good for the times. Becoming aware of his advance, the 
French seemed to lose their heads ; they grew fearful for 
their Alsatian fortresses, particularly Landau, and quickly 
concentrated here from the Netherlands, the Moselle and the 
middle Rhine all the troops of Villeroi, Coigny and Tallard, 
nearly sixty thousand in the aggregate, to check Marlbor- 
ough, whose intention they could not divine. Luckily for 
him, however, they made no attempt to interfere with his 
progress as they readily might have done, but allowed him 
to cross the Rhine and move up to Ladenburg unmolested. 
From here Marlborough, as if aiming for Ulm, marched via 
Heilbronn (June 8) through the rugged country which ends 
in the Geislingen defile, debouched into the Danube flats, 
and in good order, June 22, joined Prince Louis' thirty- 
two thousand men from the upper Danube, making an army 
over sixty thousand strong, with forty-eight guns. The road 
was new to him, but an old one to the French and German 
generals. 

This march is spoken of by English authors as an entirely 
exceptional performance. Though as a strategic operation 
it was in truth a stroke of the happiest, it was no more 
than had been frequently made before. Not to speak of 
the greater, many of the lesser lights had often done as 
much. Duke Bernard had gone from the Rhine way beyond 
the Isar ; Baner had marched from the Baltic to the Danube ; 
Torstenson had inarched from the Baltic to Vienna ; Turenne 
and Wrangel had repeatedly started from the upper or the 
lower Rhine and had pushed far into the empire, — once to 



OVERPRAISING MARLBOROUGH. 711 

the banks of the Inn ; Montecuculi had forced his way from 
Vienna to the Netherlands, with Turenne to oppose him ; 
Eugene had pushed across the Alps into Italy and well up 
the Po, fighting for every step ; in this very campaign he 
marched from his base to the Rhine, quite as far as the 
Anglo-Dutch. It is quite inaccurate to call Marlborough's 
unopposed march an unheard-of enterprise. However suc- 
cessfully the knot of the difficulty may have been cut by 
Eugene and him at Blenheim, the bald fact is that Marlbor- 
ough marched to the Danube because, as all the military 
world knew, he was needed there ; but he does not even 
appear to have had any immediate strategic objective. He 
was only, like the true soldier he was, marching toward the 
sound of the guns. In common with the others he saw that 
the allied cause could be best helped on the Danube, because 
the French were most seriously threatening this section ; and, 
getting leave from the Dutch, he marched his army into the 
enemy's country, a thing in which he had a host. of prede- 
cessors. The idea may indeed not have been originally his. 
There is on record a letter of Eugene's to him suggesting this 
very performance, and if the scheme was of Marlborough's 
own devising, he was not the only one to see its value. In fact, 
until he had reached the Neckar, Eugene was the duke's only 
confidant ; and it is certain that the campaign was concerted 
between them long before it opened. It by no means helps 
Marlborough's splendid reputation to overstate his case. It 
is because we English-speaking peoples slur over the deeds of 
all but our own heroes that we are wont to make Marlbor- 
ough the only general of his day ; that one often meets folk 
who place Wellington as a soldier on a plane above Napo- 
leon ; or that many of us ascribe the victory of Waterloo 
solely to the Iron Duke, forgetful of " Marschal Vor warts " 
and his Prussians. All nations suffer from want of perspec- 



712 A NOTEWORTHY MEETING. 

tive in gauging their own military history ; and in writing 
the biography of a single general it is perhaps impossible not 
to err ; but we Anglo-Saxons are almost the worst offenders. 
It is not to belittle Marlborough, — his reputation as a soldier 
is beyond any one's ability to disturb, — it is to be just to his 
colleagues and contemporaries that so much must be said. 

Marlborough, Eugene and Louis personally met in Hep- 
pach in June — it was the first meeting of the two former — 
and, after discussion of the situation, it was determined that 
Marlborough and Louis should operate against the elector of 
Bavaria and Marsin, while Eugene, to whom Marlborough 
and Prince Louis sent ten thousand men, with the thirty- 
seven thousand he would then have, should remain in the 
Stollhofen lines to contain Tallard, Villeroi and Coigny. 
There was no difficulty in Eugene and Marlborough agreeing 
upon plans. They would, in this instance, have liked to oper- 
ate together and leave Prince Louis on the Rhine ; but the 
latter would not agree to this, and claimed all the rights of a 
senior in command. He had been a pupil of Montecuculi ; 
he had won battles ; he had served at Vienna with Sobieski ; 
and he was high-strung, jealous and hard to please. 

The joint forces of Marsin and the elector of Bavaria, who 
on May 4 joined at Wieblingen, were sixty-three thousand 
men and one hundred and thirty guns and mortars ; and to 
prevent Marlborough and the prince of Baden from crossing 
the Danube and marching into Bavaria, they had taken post 
in June between Lauingen and Dillingen with their back to 
the river. The forces were about equally matched : the allies 
had sixty thousand men and forty-eight guns. During Marl- 
borough's march there had been some manoeuvring in the 
Black Forest country, but it resulted in nothing which affected 
the year's campaign. 

Marlborough and Prince Louis, who, though the latter was 



A BOLD FLANK MARCH. 713 

acknowledged to be senior, had resorted to the questionable, 
but at that day common, device of commanding the whole 
army on alternate days, proposed indeed to force their way 
into Bavaria, but they did not try to cross at Ulm, as the 
enemy expected them to do. They moved up to Giengen on 
the Brenz, and thence, at the end of June, by a flank march 
in the presence of the enemy's army, to Donauwbrth. The 
enemy held to his lines, and did not attack them on the march, 
but allowed them to pass unmolested within a few miles, over 
bad roads and under marked difficulties. The march of the 
duke and prince was bold ; but had there been at Lauingen 
such a man as Turenne, it would have scarcely escaped lead- 
ing to a battle. To march to Donauworth was an excellent 
manoeuvre ; to march so near the enemy by the flank was a 
risk pardonable in those days, but hardly permissible in front 
of an active enemy. The allies were taking liberties with 
unenterprising opponents. Not only was the enemy indolent, 
but the position of the elector and Marsin was thoroughly 
false. Lauingen was not the place to defend Bavaria with 
the allies headed for Donauworth, and even when they awoke 
to this fact they contented themselves with sending ten thou- 
sand men to Count d'Arco, who commanded at Donauworth, 
and was expected to head off a force of sixty thousand men 
well equipped and led, with a fifth the number. Such adver- 
saries promised to be an easy prey. 

Donauworth was not over well fortified, but the Schellen- 
berg, near by, was intrenched, and was joined to the town by 
lines not quite completed. Within these works lay d'Arco's 
camp. 

No general ever possessed the instinct of fighting to a 
keener degree than Marlborough ; this instinct at times over- 
rode his judgment, and as he was determined to cross the 
river at Donauworth, he had no sooner reached the vicinity 



714 



A PICKED FORCE. 



than he undertook an assault on the Scheilenberg, to seize 
the bridge over the Danube, by which alone he could make 
his way. He was led to do so by the belief that if he delayed 
d'Arco would strengthen his works so as to make them inex- 
pugnable ; that the French and Bavarians were concentrating 
opposite to bar his passage ; and by the fact that this was his 




Assault on the Scheilenberg. 

day of command, and that Prince Louis was not of a mind 
to make the assault. 

It was July 2. Marlborough headed a vanguard of ten 
thousand men, followed closely by the rest of the army. He 
reached the Wbrmitz, a small affluent of the Danube, which 
flowed past the Scheilenberg lines, at three o'clock, crossed 
the stream above the place, and gave his men, who had been 
marching since early dawn, two or three hours' rest. Aware 
from what he could learn of the terrain that the place was 
very strong, he detailed a picked force from each battalion, 
which, with thirty squadrons and three regiments of Prince 



AN UNWISE ASSAULT. 715 

Louis, made up a column of ten thousand five hundred men. 
Count d'Arco had some two thousand more. 

The Schellenberg lines were old fortifications erected by 
Gustavus Adolphus, and d'Arco was at work with a large 
body of countrymen in repairing them. The hill itself is 
about three hundred feet above the river. Donauworth was 
a fortress, but not well kept up nor sufficiently garrisoned ; 
and the force d'Arco sent to hold it was badly stationed and 
worse led. From the town, which lay in the confluence of 
the Wormitz and Danube, the lines which d'Arco was seek- 
ing to intrench and hold ran over the hill and back to the 
Danube. Opposite the centre of the hill lay a thick wood, 
through which a column could not well advance. After recon- 
noitring, Marlborough determined to attack on either side of 
the wood ; the assault between the wood and Donauworth to 
be made in force. It looks as if he had not sufficiently stud- 
ied the situation, for he chose the strongest part of the line 
for the assault, whereas he could more easily have broken 
through nearer the town, where the half-finished works were 
barely waist high. Nor was there any greater gain to be had 
by getting a foothold on the Schellenberg; the town was 
nearer the bridge Marlborough wanted. But the assaults 
were delivered by his corps d'elite in gallant style. The first 
one was met with equal courage, was repulsed, and the Ba- 
varians made a sortie with the bayonet, which in its turn 
was met and broken by an English regiment, which took the 
enemy in flank. A second assault had no better result. A 
third failed, and the Bavarians again issued in a bayonet 
charge from their works, and were only checked by the cav- 
alry. Failure was imminent, and the loss had been fearful. 
Marlborough had undertaken a desperate task. 

But help was at hand. Prince Louis' column now arrived, 
crossed the Wormitz near Berg, and fell on the defenses of 



716 HEAVY LOSSES. 

d'Arco at the town. With scarcely any opposition he broke 
through the weak intrenchments, and thus took d'Arco in 
reverse. Marlborough had for hours been hammering at a 
spot which he could not break, when close at hand was a weak 
one he had not heeded. At once recognizing that the posi- 
tion was lost, d'Arco put himself at the head of two French 
regiments of dragoons, ployed his foot into close columns, 
cut a path through the Baden troops, and made his way to the 
bridge at Donauworth, where he crossed to the south bank of 
the Danube. Though Marlborough had done all the fight- 
ing, Prince Louis arrogated to himself the credit of the vic- 
tory, as having been first inside the works. 

The loss of the allies was six to seven thousand men (fifteen 
hundred killed and four thousand wounded, say the English 
authorities) ; that of the Bavarians only sixteen hundred ; 
but the bold assault, though it seems, as says Lossau, to have 
been delivered rather prematurely, and was very costly, made 
such an impression on the elector, who with Marsin still 
stood at Lauingen, and had acted with unwarrantable leth- 
argy, that he crossed the river, threw the bulk of his Bava- 
rian forces into his fortresses, where they were useless, retired 
to Augsburg with all Marsin's and five thousand of his own 
men, and sat down in an intrenched camp. 

It may be asserted that this assault was as justifiable as 
that of Gustavus at the Lech or at the Alte Veste ; but in 
the latter case, the Swede had exhausted every other means 
to bring his opponent to battle, as an outlet to a situation 
growing daily more intolerable, while in the former the king, 
once set on crossing in the face of the enemy, carefully 
selected his point of attack and actually got the best one. It 
seems to be agreed by the best Continental critics, and these 
are all warm admirers of the duke, — - as who indeed is not ? 
— that the assault here was a mistake. 



EUGENE TO THE RESCUE. Ill 

Marlborough and Prince Louis crossed the Danube July 5, 
took Rain, and appeared, July 23, at Augsburg, camping at 
Friedberg, on the road from Augsburg to Munich. Augs- 
burg was too strong to attack, and no terms could be made 
with the elector ; but the allies began to devastate Bavaria as 
a means of detaching him from his alliance with France. 
This devastation was thorough, and conducted, says Alison, 
with savage ferocity. Three hundred towns or villages were 
consumed, a species of vengeance for the devastation of the 
Palatinate by Turenne. Despite this terrifying havoc the 
elector stood to his alliance. 

Meanwhile Tallard and Villeroi had been idly watching 
these operations with their fifty-eight thousand men, which 
Eugene was holding by his presence at Stollhofen ; but Tal- 
lard, who had received orders to hurry to Bavaria with some 
chosen troops to the aid of Marsin and the elector, crossed 
the Rhine at Strasburg, July 1, with twenty-six thousand 
men, and marching through the valley of the Danube, reached 
Augsburg August 5. Villeroi and Coigny, with thirty-two 
thousand men, remained to confront the Stollhofen lines and 
protect Tallard's rear. So soon as Prince Eugene became 
aware of Tallard's march, he grasped the danger to which 
his allies would be exposed by these reinforcements to an 
army already outnumbering their own, left twenty-one thou- 
sand men under the count of Nassau in Stollhofen, and July 
18 marched with sixteen thousand on a parallel line but 
through more rugged country on the north, to prevent Tal- 
lard from doing his colleagues a mischief. He reached Dil- 
lingen August 4 ; his speed had been good, but Tallard had 
started and kept ahead of him ; and as the French com- 
mander had much the larger force, Eugene would not have 
deemed it wise to attack, had he overtaken him. Now that 
he was so far, however, he determined not to return, but to 



718 PRINCE LOUIS LEAVES. 

reinforce the allies, and marched to Miinster, near Donau- 
worth. Tallard effected his end, and with the elector of 
Bavaria and Marsin, the army numbered some fifty-seven 
thousand men, with all the fortresses heavily garrisoned. It 
was now the manifest duty of the French and Bavarians to 
attack either Marlborough or Eugene singly ; but they hesi- 
tated so long as to lose their opportunity. Marlborough 
and the prince of Baden were not on good terms, and the 
English general finally induced Louis to undertake the appar- 
ently useful but not essential siege of Ingolstadt with fif- 
teen thousand men, while he himself first covered it and then 
joined Prince Eugene. For the former purpose he marched 
by Aichach to Schrobbenhausen August 5, and thus took 
post between Ingolstadt and Augsburg. 

To draw the allies from Bavaria, the French and the elector 
adopted the singular plan of themselves moving to the left 
bank of the Danube, whereas by remaining where they were, 
they would have kept the allies inactive, or have obliged 
them to resort to besieging the strong places of the Danube 
country. They thought, moreover, to threaten Eugene, and to 
draw Prince Louis from the siege of Ingolstadt. Crossing at 
Lauingen, August 9, they moved down towards Hochstadt, 
on hearing of which, and on consultation with Marlborough, 
Eugene, who had returned to Dillingen, marched to the Schel- 
lenberg, while Marlborough moved to Donauworth. This still 
secured the siege of Ingolstadt, which was now fully invested. 
The enemy had been operating on exterior lines, leaving the 
interior lines to the allies. 

Marlborough sent twenty-two battalions and twenty-seven 
squadrons ahead to Eugene, and next day, August 10, fol- 
lowed in two columns, one crossing the Danube at Nieder- 
Schonf eld and the other at Kain over the Lech, and then over 
the Danube at Donauworth. Eugene on August 11 joined 



MARLBOROUGH AND EUGENE. 



719 



Marlborough.' s army. The two had. fifty-six thousand men ; 
the enemy perhaps five thousand more. They were now to 
act as colleagues in daily operations for the first time. 

No difficulty ever existed between Marlborough and Eugene 
as to command. They were men of altogether too big calibre 
to be jealous of each other's precedence, or to waste time 
discussing trifles. Whenever they acted together, they com- 
manded each his own army, and the joint forces on alternate 
days, and never failed to agree as to the advisability of any 
special operation. It was not a question of either, whose day 
it was, giving orders to the other ; a suggestion sufficed, for 
the mind of each could grasp the situation and argue cor- 
rectly with reference to it. 

Following is Prince Eugene's estimate of forces, given in a 
letter dated August 25, 1704, viz. : — 



Allies. 



Eugene r.w.^— ans 
[ Empire 



Battalions. Squadrons. 
( Prussians 11 15 1 
7 





18 



f English 

Marlborough J ™± 
c. and 1, 



Guns 66 



14 
14 
Hessians 7 

| Hanoverians 13 
(^ Danes 

48 

Total 66 



01 
2*1-20,000 

— I 
74 J 



141 
22 

7 

25 
22 



90 
164 



36,000 



56,000 



Marsin 1. w. 



French. 

Battalions. Squadrons. 

I French 29 50 18,000 

(Bavarians 13 37 12,000 

42 87 30,000 



Tallard r. and c. French 42 60 30,000 
Total 84 147 60,000 
Guns 90 



In the above estimate of the allied forces, presumably as 
correct as any we can find, though there are many others, 
all varying somewhat from each other, the very small per- 
centage of British troops is striking. We are brought up to 
believe Blenheim (or Hochstaclt) to be an English victory ; 
and it cannot be denied that half the glory of the battle 
belongs to the English general. But only a fifth of the allied 
foot was English ; less than a sixth of the cavalry. England 
in this war, as in most other land-wars she has done, fought 



720 ACCIDENTAL BATTLE. 

with her money-bags and not her men. At sea the case was 
different. There the British tars always bared their breasts, 
and fought as Anglo-Saxons have always fought, on land or 
sea, like heroes. But if, in the battles of Marlborough for 
instance, we gauge the credit of the English according to the 
troops they furnished, Blenheim and Malplaquet, Oudenarde 
and Ramillies, cease to be English victories, — a distinct loss 
to Greater Britain. 

It was here, near Hochstadt, that the rival armies fell into 
almost accidental battle. Though ready for it, neither army 
had anticipated a general engagement at any particular time. 
The French and the elector desired a battle in order to drive 
the allies out of Bavaria, and it was better that it should 
occur on the left bank of the Danube than on the right; 
Marlborough and Eugene were eager to measure arms because 
they believed that they could beat the enemy and thus release 
the empire from its difficulties. It was evident that the situ- 
ation must breed a battle before many days ; for the com- 
manders on both sides had determined on fighting. 

The two allied generals had early on the 12th ridden out on 
a reconnoissance, during which they caught sight of the enemy 
in full march. They withdrew to Tapfheim, and having from 
the church tower observed the French and Bavarians go into 
camp, at once returned to headquarters. 

Marsin and Tallard had assumed that the allies were on 
the way to Nordlingen, to which view some movements of the 
allied cavalry, according to their reports, contributed. So 
confirmed was Tallard in this view, indeed, that he mistook 
the " assembly " blown in the allied camp on the morning of 
the battle, for the order to march. The Franco-Bavarians 
had not expected an immediate encounter, nor indeed taken up 
any distinct order of battle ; they had rather camped in order 
of march, and as each French general as well as the elector 



THE TERRAIN. 721 

commanded his own forces, they had advanced in three sep- 
arate bodies. Tallard was on the right ; Marsin on his left, 
and the elector beyond him. The cavalry had been as usual 
disposed on the flanks of each army, and thus the bulk of the 
French mounted men, when emerging from camp to form, 
would occupy the centre of the whole line, separating the 
infantry wings. This queer order neither suited the ground 
nor was adapted for battle. In fact, owing to the leaning of 
the flanks on Liitzingen and Blenheim, which were held 
mainly by foot, the amount of cavalry in the centre during 
the battle was increased. 

Knowing the enemy to be near by in force, the French 
general had made suitable dispositions. Where the cavalry 
stood, near the village of Oberklau, the line made a slight 
salient, so as to include the village in its scheme. In their 
front, but too far off to be of much good as a defense, though 
doubtless it would detain the assailants, ran the Nebelbach 
in a low, deep, marshy bed. Above Oberklau the brook was 
divided into, or rather fed by, four small streams, making the 
ground opposite Marsin and the elector much harder to cross 
than below the village. Tallard' s right leaned on the Danube 
at Blenheim, which village he now occupied with twenty- 
seven battalions and twelve squadrons of dragoons, — about 
fifteen thousand men, a detachment which dangerously re- 
duced his force of infantry elsewhere. Marsin had taken 
possession of Oberklau and Liitzingen, and there placed a 
number of battalions of foot mixed in with the horse. 
Though the French lay at the top of a gentle, long slope 
which ran downward to the Nebelbach, yet the position was 
bad, for the troops did not correspond to the terrain ; the 
several arms were not placed where they could do effective 
service or sustain each other. Yet one may imagine the 
French marshals arguing that the ground in the centre was 



722 



THE FRENCH LINE. 



excellent for cavalry to act upon, as on right and left it 
was not ; but in that case they needed heavy infantry sup- 
ports for the horse thus massed. To neglect this point was to 
invite defeat. 

The bulk of the foot was thus in two bodies on the extreme 
flanks. These were strongly posted, the right in Blenheim 
and the left at the foot of rugged hills which cavalry and 
artillery could not cross. But though the left centre was sus- 
tained by Oberklau, yet the centre was far too extended, and 
between Oberklau and Blenheim there stood eighty squadrons 
of horse and only ten battalions of foot in reserve. The guns 
were fairly distributed all along the line. To the villages 
some attention had been paid ; they had not only intrench- 
ments, but the streets were barricaded with carts and the 
furniture from the houses. Their strength did not, however, 
help the weakness of the centre against a suitable attack. 
Nothing but the marshy Nebelbach, no insuperable obstacle, 
protected it. 




French Mortar. (16th Century.) 



LVIL 

BLENHEIM. AUGUST 13, 1704. 

Marsin and the elector held the left ; Tallard the right. They had formed 
in line as they marched, so as to throw the bulk of their cavalry in the centre. 
In the allied army, Eugene stood on the right, Marlborough on the left, each 
leading his own army. There was absolute good-will and helpfulness between 
them ; though alternating daily in command, they acted together as one man. In 
their front ran the Nebelbach, which must be crossed, and Tallard had occupied 
Blenheim in force. The allies attacked. On the left, Marlborough devoted 
much time to capturing Blenheim, but fruitlessly ; on the right, opposed to 
heavier forces, Eugene struggled hard for victory, but was thrice thrust 
back. Finally he drove in the elector and Marsin, while Marlborough, giving 
up his direct assaults on Blenheim, attacked and broke through the French cen- 
tre of horse and took the village in reverse. Eugene followed up the retiring 
French ; Marlborough captured Tallard in Blenheim. The victory was com- 
plete, and decisive in its results. The French fled to France ; the Bavarians 
gave up their alliance with them, and surrendered their fortresses. One victory 
had done more than several campaigns. 

On returning to camp from their reconnoissance, a council 
of war was held by the allied commanders, and, though a 
number of officers voted nay, Marlborough and Eugene both 
decided on battle. They feared delay, lest the enemy, antici- 
pating their action, should make their field-works stronger ; 
they were themselves suffering for lack of forage ; their vict- 
ual from Nordlingen was not always secure; and Villeroi 
was rumored to be advancing" to reinforce Tallard and Marsin. 
Moreover, Marlborough had been roundly abused in England 
for advancing so far from the Netherlands, and he desired to 
justify his action. The armies lay but three miles apart, the 
allies encamped on the heights behind Tapfheim, back of the 
plain which stretched between them and the French. Attack 



724 THE ALLIES' PLANS. 

being decided on, they broke up, August 13, at daylight, and 
advanced on the enemy in a number of columns. Their 
movements had been observed by the French, but the advance 
was deemed a manoeuvre to protect a flank march to Norcl- 
lingen. That the French generals did not expect a battle 
that day is shown by the fact that much of their cavalry was 
out foraging ; but this was called in and the order given to 
prepare for action ; the outposts were ordered back from the 
villages north of the Nebelbach, and these were set on fire 
to prevent their being used for defense. 

Marlborough and Eugene are said to have again reconnoi- 
tred, and to have recognized the errors in the enemy's dis- 
positions. By some authorities it is said that the morning 
was hazy, in which case they can scarcely have learned much 
beyond satisfying themselves that the enemy had not substan- 
tially changed the formation of the day before. But a note 
by Tallard, penned at the time, states that he could see the 
allies on the hills, so that the day was probably only over- 
cast. It was at all events first determined between the com- 
manders that Eugene, who held the allied right wing, should 
make an attack on Marsin to hold his attention as well as 
that of the elector of Bavaria, while Marlborough should 
assail Blenheim. 

It is generally stated in the accounts of this battle that 
Marlborough, or Eugene, or both of them, on recognizing the 
weakness of the enemy's centre, then and there determined to 
break through at this point and cut the enemy in two. What- 
ever plan was adopted was a joint one between the allied 
commanders ; and it does not appear from the initial attacks 
that they had so soon perceived that the centre was the 
proper place on which to deliver the vital blow. If it is true 
that they did so, then Marlborough's early expenditure of 
force on Blenheim was an error, and not in accordance with 



FRENCH ERRORS NOT SEEN 



725 



the plan adopted. To carry out the idea of breaking the 
centre, only partial attacks on Blenheim and opposite Liitz- 
ingen should have been made, stout enough to hold the 
enemy from reinforcing the centre from these places, but no 







'V^W* 1 



-0"VrTw>-»j 



more. The action taken by Marlborough does not warrant 
the belief that the generals founded their initial plan for the 
battle on the enemy's weak centre. 

The bulk of Tallard's foot was thus engaged in defending 
Blenheim, which he, as well as Marlborough, at first deemed 
the key of the battle-field. From Blenheim to Oberklau 



726 THE ATTACK OPENED. 

there was nothing but horse. Oberklau had nearly thirty 
battalions in and about it; then came some Bavarian and 
French cavalry, and then eighteen battalions of foot thrown 
forward of Liitzingen in a crotchet along the foot of the 
hills. Tallard had but ten battalions to sustain his cavalry. 
Marsin and the elector had a second line in which foot stood 
behind foot and horse behind horse. Batteries lay all along 
the line, judiciously disposed. 

In Eugene's front the ground was exceptionally difficult, 
and it was high noon before he was able to make it practica- 
ble by filling up the worst places with fascines and logs, or 
boards from the houses in Schwenenbach ; but being cov- 
ered by undergrowth, he had been able to push his skir- 
mishers over unobserved ; whereupon he sent word to Marl- 
borough that he was ready to cross. The batteries of both 
armies had been steadily at work ever since eight o'clock, 
with quite marked effect ; the engineers had been meanwhile 
engaged in bridging the Nebelbach in several places in front 
of the left ; Marlborough gave his orders to his wing, and the 
attack began. The duke's wing was in four lines, two of 
infantry, and two of cavalry between them ; it was intended 
that the footmen of the first lines should push over the brook 
and take such position as to enable the horse under their 
cover to get across and form, — the two rear lines to remain 
in reserve. On the extreme left was a heavy column of the 
three arms under Lord Cutts, ready to be launched against 
Blenheim. 

This column was first across the Nebelbach ; it is stated 
to have been sent to the attack by eleven; Coxe says one. 
Eugene was not fairly across until half-past twelve, owing 
to the bad ground and the opposition of the enemy's light 
troops, but the crossing was finally accomplished under 
cover of the guns. The French batteries had been so well 



EUGENE DRIVEN IN. 121 

served that a loss of at least two thousand men is said to 
have been inflicted on the allies before they came to close 
quarters. Though the ground he had to cross was not only 
marshy but cut up by bushes so as to break up the alignment 
of his men in their advance, Eugene made his attack in good 
heart, and on his first assault took a battery of six guns ; but 
when he had broken Marsin's first line, the second charged 
in on his own, broke it, and drove it back across the first 
brook. He suffered seriously from lack of sufficient infantry, 
and the guns from Oberklau could enfilade his line. A 
second charge by the horse was driven back by the elector ; 
and a third one was rather weakly delivered by the tired 
troops, though headed by Eugene in person. It became evi- 
dent to the prince that he had too heavy a force against him. 
He was, in fact, with a third of the allied numbers, and nearly 
all cavalry at that, facing half the enemy, and on the worst 
possible ground. Nor indeed, save the Prussians, did his 
cavalry behave as it should. The prince was called on to 
shoot down numerous runaways ; the material was far less 
good than that of Marlborough. That Eugene kept them at 
their work, however, the fearful list of casualties abundantly 
testifies. Nothing daunted, notwithstanding backsets and 
poor response to his exertions, he so ably utilized his squad- 
rons, both afoot and in the saddle, that neither Marsin nor 
the elector sent any reinforcements to the centre. 

While the prince was preparing and pushing his attack, 
Marlborough had got over the troops on his extreme left, 
and these had fallen on the village of Blenheim in six heavy 
lines. Lord Cutts assaulted in gallant form, but he was vio- 
lently thrown back ; successive bodies of troops were sent on 
to aid in the attacks, but no impression whatsoever was made. 
General Clerambault, with the infantry in Blenheim, held his 
own with ease ; and the French horse, breaking out on the 



728 FAILURE AT BLENHEIM. 

allied columns with much effect, drove them back across the 
brook, and it was with difficulty, though the assaults were 
renewed again and again with brilliant courage, that the 
allies held their ground at all in front of the place. No 
lodgment was made in Blenheim. Meanwhile the forces of 
the allied centre had been preparing to push their way across 
the Nebelbach. 

It was a sad mistake that Tallard, during this time, did 
not make a counter attack. Had he done so, Marlborough 
might have been unable to get his men into line. But the 
French contented themselves with cannonading from the 
front, and enfilading the allied centre with the batteries of 
Blenheim and Oberklau. 

Finally, Marlborough became convinced that he could not 
take Blenheim, and having debouched from Unterklau and 
pushed his first two lines of the centre under Churchill across 
the Nebelbach, though much hampered by a serious flank 
attack from Oberklau, he finally drew up his cavalry in 
front, and his foot behind, with intervals through which the 
cavalry, if thrown back, could retire, and delivered an impet- 
uous assault. It was already five o'clock. From four to six 
hours had been wasted on Blenheim ; no gain had been made, 
and Eugene had been struggling against heavy odds ever 
since half-past twelve. But once started, the left wing cav- 
alry rode at the French line in close ranks with good effect ; 
and though in its turn several times repulsed, on each occa- 
sion the pursuing French squadrons came upon the infan- 
try line in the rear, and were severely handled by the salvos 
of musketry. They had not enough foot in the centre to 
follow up and hold what gain they might make. Finally, 
the French horse and the ten supporting battalions of foot 
gave way ; Marlborough seized on the propitious moment 
with the keen eye of the battle-captain ; one more charge, and 



THE CENTRE BROKEN. 729 

the enemy broke and retired in great confusion. " Le gros 
de la cavalier ie a fait ?nal,je dis tres mal" wrote Tallard in 
his official report. Still they had held their own gallantly ; 
they were simply ill-placed. Part were cut down, part cap- 
tured, part pursued to Hochstadt ; Marlborough now turned 
on the fifteen thousand men in Blenheim, and after hard 
fighting, surrounded and captured the entire body, including 
Marshal Tallard, who from the centre was seeking to join the 
Blenheim force. 

While Marlborough was thus earning a difficult success on 
the left, and before he had actually broken the centre, Prince 
Eugene, though thrice repulsed, had, after collecting and 
resting his men, a fourth time led an attack on Marsha's and 
the elector's front and left flank ; and this time successfully, 
driving the enemy well back beyond Lutzingen. His task 
had been the harder one. It was at the time Marlborough 
ruptured Tallard's centre and captured that marshal, of 
which fact the news spread rapidly, that Eugene broke down 
Marsin's resistance, and when Marlborough had definitely 
thrust back the French cavalry, the elector and Marsin were 
in full retreat. 

Tallard had committed a grave mistake in cooping up so 
much of his infantry in Blenheim, and leaving nothing but 
cavalry to oppose to Marlborough's centre. The latter made 
a lesser mistake in giving so much of his attention to the 
capture of Blenheim. He may have been somewhat de- 
layed by bridging the Nebelbach ; but not much beyond 
noon. It was only at five o'clock, when he threw up his at- 
tempts there and devoted himself to breaking through the 
cavalry-centre of the enemy, that he contributed his best 
efforts to the victory. Had Marsin and the elector had 
opposite to them a less strong opponent than Eugene, they 
would have certainly detached some of their forty-two bat- 



730 HEAVY CASUALTIES. 

talions to aid the centre, with what result it is hard to say. 
And in the later phases of the fight, had Marlborough left 
a smaller force to engage the Blenheim body, and turned 
with his bulk against Marsin's naked right flank, the latter 
would have been annihilated, and Blenheim would have fallen 
later. As it was, Marsin made good his escape. But when 
Marlborough had made up his mind to break the centre of 
the French army, he put his whole soul into the work, and 
won. 

The French, out of sixty thousand, lost thirty thousand 
men, of whom fifteen "thousand were prisoners, two hundred 
flags, fifty guns and all their baggage. The allies lost over 
eleven thousand men, — forty-four hundred killed, seventy- 
three hundred wounded. Eugene pursued Marsin some dis- 
tance; Marlborough, busy with Blenheim, attempted no 
tactical pursuit. The allies, according to the questionable 
custom of that time, remained five days on the battle-field. 
Strategic pursuit, unusual then in any event, was delayed by 
the allies because bread and forage had partially failed them. 

The French, with the thirty thousand men they had left, 
crossed the Danube at Lauingen, left fifteen battalions in 
Ulm, gathered in the garrisons of Augsburg and other places, 
and leaving Bavaria to her fate, fled along the Danube valley 
to the Rhine, crossed that river, August 31 to September 2, 
at Strasburg, joined the twenty thousand men of Villeroi and 
the ten thousand of Coigny, and thus made up again an array 
of sixty thousand men for the defense of France. 

The troops besieging Ingolstadt were withdrawn and part 
of them put at the siege of Ulm, which surrendered Septem- 
ber 11 with two hundred and fifty guns and twelve hundred 
barrels of powder. 

The victory of Blenheim, won in consequence of the errors 
of the French, had immense results. After taking Ulm, the 



TO WHOM THE CREDIT? 731 

allies marched to Philipsburg, crossed with sixty-five thou- 
sand men, captured Trarbach on the Moselle, and besieged 
Landau. Marlborough and Eugene were anxious for another 
battle ; but Prince Louis would not agree to it, and insisted 
on a war of sieges. The French had recovered equality in 
force, but had lost all morale ; the allies were allowed to take 
Landau and Trier ; and only winter put an end to their suc- 
cesses. The Bavarians made a treaty in November, by which 
their fortresses were surrendered, and the Bavarian garrisons 
discharged. 

This campaign, thanks to these two great leaders, showed 
again the superiority of concentration and battle over detailed 
operations and sieges. Forces had been concentrated in an 
important territory, and the result of a victory had been 
decisive. Even before the battle, the assault on the position 
at the Schellenberg, though delivered with too little deliber- 
ation, had won marked moral results, and all his fortresses 
did not save the elector of Bavaria : after one real victory, 
even without pursuit, they succumbed. On the other hand, 
the Stollhofen lines were of no use whatever to the allies. 
Despite them, or because of them, Tallard first sent part of 
his troops to Marsin and then marched to Bavaria. 

We must allow Eugene a full half of the credit for this 
memorable victory. From his earliest day he was unques- 
tionably as much a fighter as the duke, he conducted more 
campaigns and won more victories. There prevails among 
us Anglo-Saxons an impression that Marlborough was the one 
who urged on to battle, as he is often assumed if not asserted 
to have been the chief in command. All this is quite unwar- 
ranted. As the responsibility was equal, so must be the 
credit for the victory. Not that English historians fail to 
praise Eugene ; some, as Coxe, are honest eulogists of the 
prince ; but by implication he is treated as if he had been 



732 TO EACH HIS SHARE. 

Marlborough's lieutenant and not his equal in command; 
every strategic march is ascribed to the Briton, every tactical 
manoeuvre posted to his credit; and the inference drawn 
by the average reader is necessarily wrong. To some histori- 
ans there was only one directing influence in this war, and 
that Marlborough's ; the existence, in success, of any other 
force is ignored. In failure, of course, the Dutch deputies 
are omnipotent. 

No criticism can belittle Marlborough's splendid conduct 
on this field ; nor, on the other hand, must we rob Eugene 
of one of his laurels. On the allied right, with twenty 
thousand men, of which only a small part was foot, the 
gallant prince had defeated Marsin and the elector with 
thirty thousand men, on ground worse adapted for attack 
than that opposite Marlborough, and especially bad for cav- 
alry. Had Eugene not contained nearly half the enemy, 
Marlborough would scarcely have been able to break the 
centre, for this would assuredly have been reinforced from 
the heavy masses of foot under Marsin and the elector. As it 
was, when Tallard appealed to Marsin for aid, the latter 
replied that he was himself too hard beset. That Eugene's 
fighting was of the hottest is shown by the fact that out of his 
twenty thousand men he lost six thousand, — nearly a third, 
while out of thirty-six thousand men Marlborough lost but 
five thousand, — only a seventh. And as Eugene's force was 
mostly cavalry, which cannot as a rule be put over such bad 
ground or into such close contact, and rarely loses as heavily 
as foot, this is all the more a tribute to the prince's excep- 
tional vigor and determination. 

As children we have been taught from our schooldays up 
to look to Marlborough rather than to Eugene for the success 
of Blenheim, and it is hard to eradicate the feeling. But 
when we weigh the part of each, from the moment that saw 



THE VALUE OF BATTLES. 733 

Eugene without waiting for authority from any source march 
out of the Stollhofen lines to follow Tallard, — a brilliant 
inspiration that lay at the very root of success, — to his last 
moment of pursuit of the flying French ; the part which 
Eugene bore against greater difficulties on the allied right, 
so as to enable Marlborough to succeed on the left and 
centre ; when we remember Zenta, Turin and Belgrade, and 
the whole military life of the wonderful imperial marshal, 
we must cheerfully allow him full half the credit for this 
great and decisive victory. 

Let us lay our tribute equally at the feet of both. Fol- 
lowing in the footsteps of Gustavus, they inaugurated the era 
of great battles and of battle-tactics. Blenheim, though the 
tactical combinations were by no means perfect, was a worthy 
successor of Breitenfeld and Liitzen ; was one of those 
object-lessons in war which teach even the obstinate ; and 
which here showed the world that intrenched lines, fortresses 
heavily garrisoned, and other defensive devices are as nothing 
compared to offensive energy and skill on the battle-field. 
As the modern art of war is distinctly dependent on manoeu- 
vres leading up to battle, so we owe to Marlborough and 
Eugene, as successors of Gustavus and predecessors of Fred- 
erick, a debt for their grand conception of the value of fight- 
ing over mere manoeuvring. 

Nor is this said in forgetfulness of the battles delivered 
and won by Turenne and by Conde. It was such men as all 
these who first saw the error of carrying the theory of forti- 
fied lines too far, and who prepared the way for Frederick 
and Napoleon to make perfect ; and it may well be said that 
the two last captains would scarcely have risen to the height 
they reached but for these same predecessors in the art of 
war. 

With Marlborough's splendid diplomatic services during 



734 THE UNTUTORED SOLDIER. 

the War of the Succession this history has nothing to do ; it 
is only as a captain that he is gauged. But even in diplo- 
macy, the accomplishment of Eugene may well be placed 
beside his colleague's. 

We are often told about the untutored soldier, whose keen 
military instinct, power to divine the intentions of the enemy, 
and courage of his convictions make him superior to the 
book-worm who is full of military saws and warlike instances ; 
and Marlborough has been held up as a sample of the unedu- 
cated general. Such, to begin with, is not the fact ; Marl- 
borough had received the best practical education of the day 
under its greatest leaders; and history moreover shows us 
that the great captains of the world have been men to whom 
a generous providence gave the one quality, and whose own 
industry and intelligence have made good use of the other. 
No one doubts the superiority of the gifted unread man over 
the highly educated weakling; but Alexander, Hannibal, 
Gustavus, Frederick and Napoleon were all born soldiers, 
deep-read and trained to arms as well. Caesar is perhaps the 
exception that proves the rule ; and yet he got a fair military 
education in the Spanish peninsula, and the best one in the 
world in Gaul ; and who knows how much he had studied 
the military works and generals preceding his day? It is 
probable that he had Arrian and Xenophon and Polybius by 
heart. Had he not indeed taken all learning to be his prov- 
ince? It might be claimed, because Frederick hated war, 
that he was an unread soldier ; but who except he unearthed 
and profited by Epaminondas' matchless oblique order, which 
had lain buried for two thousand years? The same thing 
applies to all captains of the second rank : Miltiades, Epami- 
nondas, Hasdrubal, Pyrrhus, the consul Nero, Scipio, Ser- 
torius, Turenne, Eugene, Marlborough, Wellington, Lee, 
Moltke, — all were men who were educated to war, and who 



KAUSLER'S OPINION. 735 

had read military history. A man need not become a book- 
worm to assimilate the lessons of history ; and the keen per- 
ceptions of a Marlborough in the field would soon make the 
lessons of a Turenne his own, and better on them, if it were 
possible, in his own campaigns. It is true that to reduce 
war to a science of diagrams and nothing more does not 
make a soldier; but given equal intellect, character and 
opportunity, it is certain that, of any two men, the one who 
has faithfully studied what his predecessors in the art of war 
have done will be by far the better. All great captains have 
profited by reading and study ; most of them have been keen 
students of the deeds of the great men before them ; and if 
there has been one who has become truly great without such 
study and training, I have failed to find him in history. I 
do not refer to mere conquerors ; I speak of great captains 
whose work has instructed mankind in the art of war. 

It is possible that the present estimate of Marlborough, 
the placing him on a lower level than Gustavus, on the same 
level with Turenne and Eugene, may evoke a protest in 
Greater Britain. But it remains no less the true estimate. 
Cuidem in sua arte crede experto ; and no doubt those who 
have best made war are the safest critics of war. No one 
will be found to deny that, naval war apart, the Continental 
nations have, in the past two generations, outstripped the 
English in capacity for the military art ; their critics will be 
found the safest ones to follow ; and an examination of the 
best critical work of all the Continental nations will sustain 
the views herein expressed. 

To quote Kausler with reference to this campaign, than 
whom there is no more honest panegyrist of Marlborough : 
" If we subject the conduct of the several commanding gen- 
erals to a critical examination, it appears that only Eugene 
stands forth fault free." 



736 



MARLBOROUGH'S REWARD. 



As lias always been and is to-day usual with the English, 
— as is in fact proper, — the most extravagant rewards and 
honors were heaped upon Marlborough. Prince Eugene, 
who had borne his full share in the campaign and in the 
battle, and whose master the emperor had gained more than 
Queen Anne, for his country was saved from the brink of 
ruin, won nothing but the additional fame which posterity 
awards him. 







Four-Barreled Gun. (16th Century.) 



LVIII. 

EUGENE AND VENDOME. 1705. 

In 1705 Vendome and Eugene manceuvred in Italy. Stahremberg and the 
duke of Savoy had been pushed up into a corner of Piedmont. The campaign 
here was one of the old-fashioned kind, in which Vendome on the defensive 
rather outmanoeuvred the prince, and held head to him in a battle at Cassano. 
The operations were between the Oglio and Adda, and both armies early retired 
into winter-quarters. In the Netherlands the campaign was equally fruitless, 
and consisted merely of secondary operations. Marlborough was hampered by 
lack of men and money ; and the year was frittered away on work which is 
scarcely worth the recital except to show what the old method was, out of 
which able generals were gradually but only slowly working. Marlborough 
sought to open the campaign on the Moselle ; but the French seized the initia- 
tive in the Netherlands, and obliged the duke to return to protect Holland. 
The plan that had been made for an invasion of France ended in only protect- 
ing Holland from invasion. 

After tlie serious defeat of 1704, Louis XIV. determined 
to operate defensively next year. To Villeroi was given the 
duty of defending Brabant: to Marsin was intrusted the 
Rhine, to Yillars the Saar and Moselle ; while Vendome was 
instructed finally to reduce the duke of Savoy, who in the 
last campaign had lost Susa, Pignerol, Aosta, Bardo, Ver- 
celli and Ivrea, and now stood on the brink of ruin. 

In 1705, in Italy, Vendome and Eugene were consequently 
once more opposed to each other. Field-Marshal Stahremberg 
and the duke of Savoy were in a bad situation ; Vendome had 
already reduced the northwestern part of Piedmont and Savoy, 
and soon after captured the fortress of Verona, which ena- 
bled him to control the line of the Adige. Some seventy- 
seven thousand French troops were in Italy, of which Ven- 



738 EUGENE AND VENDOME. 

dome commanded twenty-two thousand in Piedmont, where 
he had just captured Verona ; his brother, with fifteen thou- 
sand in the Brescia country, faced the imperialists, who with 
eight thousand had retired to the west shore of Lake Garda ; 
La Feuillade held the Nizza country with eleven thousand ; 
Laparace with five thousand was besieging Mirandola, and 
twenty-four thousand men were in fortresses. To oppose this 
extensive but in the highest degree ill-disposed array, Stah- 
remberg and Savoy had only sixteen thousand men. Prince 
Eugene was given twenty-eight thousand men and ordered to 
Piedmont to their relief. The odds were decidedly against 
him ; and he had indeed found much difficulty in procuring 
this many troops from the short-sighted Vienna ministers. 

When Eugene arrived, via Triente, at Roveredo, he moved 
down the Adige and attempted to cross the upper Mincio, 
intending to relieve Mirandola ; but checked at this river by 
the French, and hearing that Vendome was approaching the 
scene, he put part of his army across the lake in boats to 
the west bank, sent the others around the north shore, and at 
the end of May took up a strong position between Salo and 
Gavardo. Hoping to neutralize the prince, Vendome forti- 
fied a position in his front, hemmed him in between the moun- 
tains and the lake, where he was cut off from foraging in the 
open country, left the younger Vendome to hold him there, 
and returned to Piedmont, where, by drawing in some of his 
scattered forces, he soon captured the last outstanding for- 
tresses of Nizza, Villafranca and Chivasso, and drove the 
duke of Savoy back to Turin in sore distress. 

Eugene remained a month in his position, waiting for 
essential reinforcements from Austria. This was not brilliant 
conduct, but in front of such numbers it was safe. The des- 
perate situation of the duke finally constraining him to 
attempt a march to his relief, he threw up his communica- 



SHREWD MANCEUVRING. 739 

tions with the Tyrol, turned Vendome's position by the left, 
marched in the night of June 22 through the mountains via 
Nave to Brescia, where he anticipated young Vendome by a 
number of hours, and pushing on, crossed the Oglio at Calcio 
June 27 in the face of opposition. The French general did 
not attack him on the march, but moved on a parallel line to 
the south of him, via Montechiaro and Manerbio, himself 
crossed the Oglio at Pontevico, and took up a position against 
him between Crema and Lodi. Eugene took Soncino, but 
only moved as far as Romanengo. Alarmed at this sudden 
progress, the duke of Vendome left Piedmont for the moment, 
came up to join his brother, at once recrossed the Serio, and 
drew up opposite Eugene near Casal Moraro. Both gen- 
erals began to manoeuvre, Eugene to reach Piedmont, Ven- 
dome to prevent his so doing. The former tried several oper- 
ations, but none proved successful ; he could better perhaps 
have accomplished his object by a battle. He had on the 
spot an army fully as large as those under the duke and the 
younger Vendome ; but the enemy lay across his path, and, 
fearing the depletion of even victory, he preferred manoeuvre 
to battle, and sought to steal a passage of the Adda, either 
up or down the river, to join the duke of Savoy with forces 
intact. 

He first moved by a cautious night march on August 10 to 
Paradiso on the upper Adda, thinking, if Vendome did not 
follow him, to find a passage to Piedmont that way. But 
Vendome knew Eugene's shrewd ways, and discovering his 
absence next day, made speed to follow. Leaving his brother 
with thirteen thousand men on the left bank at Cassano, 
where there was a bridge protected by a strong bridge-head 
and the Kitorto canal, he crossed to the right bank of the 
Adda, on the Lodi bridge, with nine thousand, and marched 
up river, where he attempted by fortifying the banks to fore- 



740 



REDUCED TO FIGHTING. 



stall a passage by the imperialists. An accident to his pon- 
toon train delayed Eugene, and before he could cross, Ven- 
dome had put in an appearance. Eugene then, on August 17, 
stole another march back to Cassano, hoping to catch young 
Vendome at that place and beat him ; but with the idea that 
Eugene would march to Cremona, the latter had been ordered 
by the duke farther down the left bank to Rivolta, his rear- 
guard only being left in the Cassano bridge-head. Prince 

Eugene was about to attack, 
when Vendome, fearing just 
this contingency, returned 
from the upper Adda, and 
resumed his position in 
those defenses. 

Eugene had now tried 
schemes for stealing a pas- 
sage of the Adda above and 
below the French ; he had 
failed in his every device, 
and was confronted with 
the question whether he 
should force a passage or 
not. His activity had kept 
the French commander in his front, and had relieved the duke 
of Savoy to this extent, for Vendome's lieutenants at Turin 
were not able. But the prince was constantly urged by the 
emperor to reach and release the duke from his predicament ; 
Vendome had a scant ten thousand men in his front, though 
in an exceptionally strong position behind the Ritorto canal, 
while he himself had some twenty-four thousand ; young Ven- 
dome was in Rivolta, and with his hyper-indolent character, 
was scarcely apt to come up in season to aid his brother ; 
if Eugene attacked and could not force Cassano, he would 




Battle of Cassano. 



VERY SHARP ASSAULTS. 741 

not be compromised ; and if he won, lie would gain much. 
He decided on attack. 

Cassano lay behind the Adda, over which the bridge had a 
strong bridge-head. In its front was the Ritorto canal, with a 
branch running back to the river. Vendome was in a species 
of fortress, with a wet ditch twenty odd feet wide and four 
or five feet deep. A stone bridge crossed the canal on the 
Treviglio road, and was stoutly held by the French. Eugene 
first sent a column against this bridge under Count Leiningen, 
who with a gallant rush seized it, crossed, and was forming 
line on the other side, when heavy reinforcements came up 
and he was hustled back. Returning boldly to his work, after 
a short rest, Leiningen again took the bridge, aided by par- 
ties who waded the canal up to their necks in water ; but at 
the critical moment he was killed, and the assault again came 
to naught. Meanwhile all along the line, at close range, the 
rival battalions were pouring a deadly fire into each other's 
ranks. Eugene now determined to have the bridge at any 
cost. Heading a column of troops gathered from the right, he 
led them against it in person, carried it, and drove the French 
well back into the bridge-head. In and near by this the 
French made a stand. A sort of wagon-burg had been erected 
in its front, and the fighting was tenacious to the last degree, 
for if Eugene won, he would drive the French into the Adda. 
After a long and desperate contest numbers prevailed, and 
the wagon-burg was taken. Vendome came in person to the 
rescue, but Eugene, still in the thick of the fray, drove the 
French back into the bridge-head. One more effort and 
the battle would be won. Inspired by the tremendous fire of 
their gallant chieftain, the imperialists followed him over the 
breastworks, and the garrison began to fall back, hundreds 
throwing themselves into the river. But again Vendome 
came up and stemmed the tide, as Eugene reached the inner 



742 VICTORY DISPUTED. 

works of the bridge-head, and again Eugene rallied his men 
and pressed on. The two commanders were almost face to 
face. The French left wing was cut off ; Vendome was on 
the point of retiring, when, in quick succession, Eugene 
received a ball in the neck and another in the knee, which 
obliged him to go back to the surgeons. General Bibra took 
his place ; but the effort had exhausted itself, and, in the 
absence of Eugene, the Erench crowded the imperialists back 
to the stone bridge. This, however, Bibra held. 

Meanwhile Eugene's Prussian troops had made a gallant 
but ineffectual attack on the French right ; but in wading the 
canal their ammunition was wetted, and they had only their 
bayonets to rely on. With the wounding of Eugene all chance 
of success against Vendome had gone. The imperialists, after 
a four hours' battle, retired to camp. Vendome kept the 
battle-field. 

The casualties were heavy. Eugene lost two thousand 
killed and two thousand one hundred wounded. The French, 
who had been subjected to the close-range fire of superior 
numbers, are said to have lost many more, — estimates went 
as hiofh as six thousand killed and four thousand wounded, 
a sum equal to Vendome's entire force. Perhaps two thou- 
sand five hundred killed and three thousand wounded would 
be a fair guess. The loss in officers of rank was terrible ; 
few escaped being disabled. 

Both sides claimed the victory, and Te Deums were sung 
in Paris, Vienna and Turin. But Vendome had countered 
his adversary's blow. 

Eugene retired to Treviglio August 17 and intrenched a 
camp. Vendome joined his brother at Rivolta. The latter 
had had a chance to distinguish himself on this occasion by 
falling on the Austrian flank and rear from Rivolta ; but as 
he did not do so, — though the messenger dispatched to him 



WINTER-QUARTERS. 743 

with orders to this effect was captured, — Vendome deprived 
him of command. 

For two months both armies, now about equal in numbers, 
faced each other between the Adda and the Serio. Eugene 
was still waiting for reinforcements from the Tyrol, and Ven- 
dome closely watched him. Both indulged in an active small 
war. Finally, October 10, Eugene undertook a secret flank 
march by the lower Serio via Crema around Vendome's right, 
to try thus to break through to Piedmont, or, if not this, to 
cut the French off from, and himself secure better winter- 
quarters near, Cremona. But the rains delayed his bridge- 
throwing at Montadine so many hours that Yendome 
forestalled him by marching rapidly via Lodi and Pizzighe- 
tone, where were bridges and good roads, took post opposite 
the prince, and beat back his attempted passage of the river 
with considerable loss. Both armies then marched upstream 
on either bank of the Serio, and the prince, the river having 
fallen, finally succeeded in stealing a passage over a ford near 
by, and took up a position at Fontenella. Vendome sat down 
opposite him, and captured Soncino with its imperial garri- 
son. Finally Eugene, seeing that he could not succeed in 
joining the duke of Savoy, gave up the idea of doing more 
this year, and at the beginning of November retired by a 
rapid secret march across the Oglio to Chiari, and a few days 
later started for Castiglione, intending to seek winter-quar- 
ters near Mantua. But Vendome again anticipated him by a 
parallel march to his right, and by occupying the heights 
south of Lonato, thus cutting him off from the Mantua coun- 
try, and forcing him to seek winter-quarters on the west 
shore of Lake Garda. Vendome himself went into canton- 
ments in the Mantua country; Eugene, between Salo and 
Monte Chiaro. Leaving Count Reventlau in command, the 
prince returned to Vienna in January. 



744 VEN DOME'S ERRORS. 

Vendorne had acted with consummate ability, quickness 
and decision. This campaign redounds much to his credit. 
He largely outnumbered Prince Eugene, his total in Italy 
being seventy-seven thousand men to his opponent's thirty- 
two thousand ; but he checkmated the imperial general in all 
attempts to reach Piedmont, and fought him with smaller 
forces. At the same time Eugene had done well for the duke 
of Savoy. He had kept Vendorne so busy that he could not 
besiege Turin ; and while he had not been able to join his 
ally, he had accomplished the spirit of his task if not the 
letter. 

This campaign — except at Cassano — was conducted 
according to the old fashion, by manoeuvring instead of fight- 
ing, and, on the French side, by holding and besieging for- 
tresses. Vendorne could have placed sixty thousand men in 
the field, with this force have annihilated Eugene's army, 
or have crippled it for the campaign, and then, turning on 
the duke in Turin, he would scarcely have needed to besiege 
the place. Or, indeed, he might have captured Turin before 
Eugene reached the field. But the old idea still held men 
fast, and out of seventy-seven thousand men, Vendorne op- 
posed the prince in the field with but twenty-two thousand, 
the rest being planted all over Italy in fortresses. Not only 
that, but he again divided his force into two parts, one on 
either side of the Adda. Eugene was not fortunate in his 
efforts to take advantage of this opening, but his forces were 
always well concentrated, and he kept them actively employed. 
Vendome's were not so well in hand, but he displayed excep- 
tional rapidity and energy. Had he concentrated his forces 
for a single hearty blow, he might have saved Italy to the 
French arms. 

It has been said that, as the opening move, Eugene chose a 
roundabout and difficult road into Italy, via Triente and the 



POOR SUPPLIES FOR 1705. 745 

Adige, in lieu of the road up the Inn and down the Adda, 
which was the nearer route to join the duke ; that after he 
had taken Soncino, he remained at Ronianengo instead of 
crossing the Adda ; that he kept quiet, a month at Gavardo 
and two at Treviglio, while the duke of Savoy was in utmost 
need. That Eugene weighed the advantages of both routes 
across the Alps can scarcely be doubted, though we are not 
told why he did not march by the Inn- Adda ; and the delays 
mentioned are not only explained by the attendant circum- 
stances, but during these weeks Eugene never ceased from an 
active small war. Of all the generals of this era, Eugene 
was the one who least often, from whatever cause, sat down 
to inactivity. His constant push, in great and little opera- 
tions, was unequaled. The thing this year which is most 
noteworthy in Eugene's manoeuvres is that he did not blindly 
cling to his communications with Germany, but gave them up 
and relied on the country, when it became desirable. And it 
is particularly to be noted that it was he who constantly 
retained the initiative and dictated the manoeuvres. Yen- 
dome was following his lead at all times. 

As is usual after a brilliant success, the English made no 
great effort for 1705, either in men or money. Only forty 
thousand men were authorized, not so much as England's 
share of men to be furnished. At the opening of the year 
was the time to follow up the fruits of Blenheim ; but neither 
London, La Hague nor Vienna seemed to see the wisdom of 
making a strenuous effort to improve the occasion ; whereas 
Louis did all that in him lay to retrieve himself. 

Marlborough and Eugene jointly drew up a plan for 1705, 
and proposed to the allies early to concentrate on the Moselle 
their main force, which should reach ninety thousand men, 
capture Diedenhofen, Saarlouis and Metz, and invade France 
through the Duchy of Lorraine, Trier and Trarbach having 



746 A GOOD PLAN FAILS. 

already been taken and garrisoned. Marlborough's column 
should march up the Moselle, the prince of Baden up the 
Saar ; Alsace would thus be taken in reverse, and the French 
would be thrown into a defensive attitude. In half-pursu- 
ance to this advice, but with a slowness which argued ill for 
the campaign, the allies began to assemble sixty thousand 
men on the Moselle, and to place thirty thousand each on the 
Meuse and the Scheldt. Louis XIV. on his side determined 
to act defensively in the Netherlands, to put thirty-two thou- 
sand men under Yilleroi at Maestricht, to which number the 
army of the elector of Bavaria would be added later; to 
send Villars with forty-six thousand men to the Moselle ; 
to intrust Alsatia to Marsin with twenty-six thousand ; and 
to garrison all the Flanders towns. Despite these enormous 
forces, which presaged a conflict of the giants, the campaign 
was one of manoeuvring only, and without any worthy result. 
Marlborough purposed to hold the French from activity in 
the Netherlands by his operations on the Moselle ; but they 
were speedier than he was and took the initiative from him. 

The allies concentrated so slowly that Villars was able to 
cover Diedenhof en and Metz by taking up an admirable posi- 
tion above Sierck on the right bank of the Moselle, sustained 
by Saarlouis, Metz and Luxemburg in a circle in the rear. 
Marlborough reached the vicinity of Sierck at midsummer, 
long before the prince of Baden was ready to join him ; but 
as men and material were both lacking, he was able to accom- 
plish nothing ; the invasion scheme quite failed ; and Marl- 
borough was suddenly forced to return to the Netherlands, 
where Villeroi and the elector had captured Huy by assault, 
and had occupied the town and besieged the citadel of 
Luttich. So far from being able to carry the war into 
France, he was himself threatened with an invasion of the 
country he was held to defend. Under these annoying con- 



MARLBOROUGH WITHDRAWS. 



747 



ditions, Marlborough could well understand why other gen- 
erals sometimes failed in their efforts. He was certainly not 
to blame for the lack of support given him ; but it was on 
this same rock that so many of the allied generals had been 
wrecked. 

Marlborough broke up and headed for Maestricht, crossing 
the Meuse at Vise. Upon his approach the French retired 
from Luttich, and Marlborough joined Overkirk, who had 
been in Villeroi's 
front and had re- 
captured Huy. 
But in his absence 
from the Moselle 
things went quite 
amiss. Villarssent 
Villeroi twenty- 
three thousand 
men from his own 
Command, left The Line of the Dyle. 

nine thousand men on the Moselle to oppose the prince of 
Baden, who later arrived there with nineteen thousand, 
headed twenty-seven thousand men and captured Trier from 
the forces left there by Marlborough, and marched to the 
middle Rhine to join Marsin. All the advantage hoped 
from the proposed plan had vanished into thin air, and the 
Anglo-Dutch were put on the defensive. 

When Villeroi knew that Marlborough was coming, he 
withdrew to the sources of the Mehaigne into fortified lines, 
which was, according to the ideas of the day, a profitable 
thing to do. These lines were, however, altogether too long- 
to be safe. The right rested on the Meuse at Marche les 
Dames, ran north to the upper Mehaigne, thence along the 
Geete to Leau, and on to Aerschott back of the Demer. 




748 THE DYLE LINE BROKEN. 

Villeroi had force enough to conduct extensive operations, but 
not enough to keep intact so long a line, however skillfully he 
might hold it. 

Marlborough had sixty thousand men, but it was only after 
great difficulty that he persuaded the Dutch to agree to any 
active measures. Villeroi had fortified every obstacle, and, 
curiously, intrenched lines were supposed to be hard to break 
through ; but Marlborough went intelligently at it. In order 
to weaken Villeroi's centre, he demonstrated in force towards 
the right of his line, which leaned on the Mehaigne, and per- 
suaded the French general to draw from the other points a 
large body to reinforce it; having accomplished which, on 
the night of July 17 Marlborough made a forced march with 
his choice troops to the vicinity of Leau, and here, at early 
dawn, broke through the depleted French lines by a massed 
attack pushed home, with slight opposition or loss. Seeing 
that his intrenched line was no longer tenable, Villeroi fell 
back behind the Dyle with his left on Louvain. This was a 
fresh proof of the uselessness of such positions ; but they 
remained a favorite defensive scheme for many decades more. 

After much opposition by the Dutch deputies, Marlborough 
made another attempt to force the Dyle ; but the Dutch troops 
refused to do their part, and the project, though happily initi- 
ated, proved a complete failure. Later in mid- August, Marl- 
borough turned the Dyle position by its headwaters and 
forced the French back towards Brussels, thus cutting them 
off from the direct road to France. On August 18 there was 
a skirmish at Waterloo ; Marlborough made preparations to 
attack the French; they facing as Wellington did in 1815, 
and he facing north, in exactly reversed positions. But 
again, when everything was ready for attack, the Dutch dep- 
uties interposed their veto, and by the next day the French 
had made their position too strong to be assaulted by even 



BETTER PREPARATIONS FOR 1706. 749 

the hero of the Schellenberg. Forced to retire, Marlbor- 
ough took Leau and Santvliet, and leveled the lines of the 
Geete. This campaign must be pronounced a failure. 
Though it is true that the duke was not to blame for his 
lack of support and had many things to contend against, yet 
these are the same conditions which neutralized the best 
efforts of many another general of his era. And though, as 
is so often asserted, it is true that Marlborough never lost a 
battle or failed to take a place he laid siege to, it is also true 
that, from one or other cause, he conducted as many barren 
campaigns as any of the other generals whom we place in 
the same rank with himself. But this year bore one good 
fruit : the ill-success of the Flanders campaign had the effect 
of stimulating the allies to proper exertions, and in 1706 
Marlborough could take the field with a suitable equipment 
of men and money. 




Culverin. (16th Century.) 



LIX. 

RAMILLIES. MAY 23, 1706. 

Ik 1*706 Villeroi with sixty-two thousand men lay at Tirlemont. Marlbor- 
ough concentrated his sixty thousand allies near Maestricht, and marched on 
Namur. Villeroi moved by his right and met him at Ramillies, May 23, drawn 
up on high ground. Marlborough, always ready for battle, made an able feint 
on the French left, to meet which Villeroi transferred much of his force to that 
flank ; upon which Marlborough attacked the French right with great deter- 
mination, and though forced back more than once, by bringing all his available 
forces to bear, broke in the enemy's defense and drove him from the field. The 
effect of this magnificent victory was immense. Nearly all the Austrian Neth- 
erlands fell to the allies. Ramillies saved Holland. Villeroi was replaced by 
Vendome. 

In 1706 Louis XIV. put three hundred thousand men into 
the field, and proposed to act offensively. Turin and Barce- 
lona were to be vigorously besieged, and the French generals 
in Flanders and Italy were given fighting orders. Villeroi, 
with the elector of Bavaria, was to command in the Neth- 
erlands ; Villars on the Rhine ; Marsin on the Moselle ; 
Vendome was to push back the imperialists to the Tyrol 
while La Feuillade captured Turin. 

It would, this spring, have well suited the inclinations of 
Marlborough to go in person to Italy, as he had formerly 
marched to Germany, and there work with Eugene, instead of 
being tied to the narrow ideas of the Dutch deputies ; but 
the states-general would, under no circumstances whatsoever, 
permit any of their troops to go to the south of the Alps. 
The successes of Villars had so far modified the courage 
of the deputies, however, that, somewhat to his surprise, the 
duke was given freer play than usual in the Netherlands. 



TERRAIN OF RAMILLIES. 751 

The French, some sixty-two thousand strong, and with one 
hundred and thirty guns, under Yilleroi, lay near Tirlemont, 
east of the Dyle, in fortified lines covering Namur, against 
which they believed the allies had conceived an intention 
to operate. About May 20, in the Maestricht country, near 
Tongres, Marlborough concentrated his English and Dutch 
troops, a force of about sixty thousand men and one hundred 
and twenty guns. His objective was in fact Namur. To 
cover this fortress, Villeroi moved forward by his right and 
took post on Mount St. Andre on the Great Geete near Ra- 
millies. Marching towards Namur on the old Roman road 
which here runs along the Mehaigne from east to west, 
Marlborough's van soon gained sight of the French camp, 
and perceiving the approach of the enemy, Villeroi drew up 
in line. The French lay on high ground — a sort of plateau 
— where rise the Great and Little Geete rivers and several 
other minor brooks. Marlborough, well aware of the com- 
manding nature of the position, would have been glad himself 
to seize it ; but Villeroi had anticipated him and now stood 
on its summit in battle array, long before the bulk of the 
allied columns reached the ground. His army lay in a spe- 
cies of concave order on the slope of the hill back of which 
runs the Louvain-Namur turnpike, with the marshy ground 
along the Little Geete in his front, the left leaning on the 
village of Autre Eglise, the right stretching out towards 
Tavieres on the Mehaigne, and the centre strengthened by 
the villages of Ramillies and Offuz. The position, not very 
expertly taken up, was good only for defense, and Villeroi 
was constitutionally inclined towards a defensive battle. The 
cavalry of the left was behind the Little Geete, where it could 
not manoeuvre if needed ; Ramillies in Villeroi's front-centre 
was well held by foot, but could readily be turned and cap- 
tured ; the cavalry of the right stretched out towai'ds Tavieres, 



752 



VILLEROVS POSITION. 



but had nothing to lean on, nor were any foot supports near 
by it. Tavieres and an outlying hamlet beyond it were 
strengthened by some bodies of foot but lacked numbers ; the 
other villages had more, Ramillies being held by twenty bat- 
talions ; and the rest of the infantry was marshaled in two 



^■'■'■'■%,: % 



■l J Y.M., 




Battle of Ramillies. 

lines, with the one hundred and thirty guns suitably posted in 
batteries in its front. The array was formidable. It was 
because the enemy was looked for along the old Soman road 
that Villeroi had massed most of his cavalry on his right, in 
two lines, covering this approach; and because the cavalry 
comprised the Maison du Eoi, he deemed it invulnerable. 
He forgot the lesson of Blenheim. Despite errors, the line 
was strong ; and few armies are drawn up for battle, in whose 
setting up one may not discover flaws. 



A CLEVER FEINT. 753 

Knowing himself to be in the presence of the enemy, Marl- 
borough had advanced in ten columns, six of foot in the cen- 
tre, two of cavalry on each of the flanks. Riding ahead to 
reconnoitre, he at once perceived that the highest point of the 
French line, the right, where stood the tomb of Ottomond, a 
German hero of olden times, was the key of the position, and 
he determined to make it the object of his main attack. But 
in order to mislead the enemy so as to deliver his assault 
under the best conditions, he organized at the same time a 
diversion in some force against the other wing at Autre 

r 

Eglise. The concave position of the French aided him in the 
execution of this task, as he himself held the chord of the 
arc along which lay their line. With a good deal of show he 
massed a heavy column and marched it to a point opposite 
this village ; on perceiving which, Villeroi drew most of the 
reserves from his centre and dispatched them over to sustain 
his left, which he deemed to be thus threatened. An abler 
general would have divined that this was no real attack ; and 
would have acted less hastily, for the left was abundantly 
able to protect itself, for a while at least. This allied column 
was drawn up in two lines and a reserve, and having suffi- 
ciently paraded it to produce the desired impression, Marl- 
borough ordered all but the first line, under cover of some 
rolling ground which prevented its being seen, over to his 
left, and at the same time instructed the bulk of his cavalry 
so to manoeuvre as to sustain this flank. 

Shortly after noon the attack was opened by the guns, the 
French devoting their best efforts to the column supposed to be 
opposite their left, whose first line crossed the Little Geete, 
advanced to the foot of the crest opposite Autre Eglise, and 
opened fire ; while under the smoke of the fusillade, the sec- 
ond line and reserve was enabled, as stated, to move off to the 
left to sustain the main assault. 



754 STOUT FIGHTING. 

To give Villeroi no time to repair his mistake, the attack 
was at once precipitated. A body of Dutch troops moved 
on Tavieres, while a heavy column of twelve battalions was 
launched against Ramillies ; these attacks were driven home, 
and though Villeroi soon perceived that he had been misled 
by a sham attack, it was already too late. He had no reserves 
of foot to meet the onslaught on his right and was compelled 
to put in some horse, which he dismounted for the purpose, 
to sustain Tavieres. But even this proved unavailing; the 
Dutch carried the place, while a column of allied cavalry fell 
on the dismounted horsemen and cut them to pieces. The 
French horse, of which the right was mainly composed, was 
now put in ; but Overkirk threw back their first line by a 
handsome charge. The French second line, the Maison du 
Roi, — the flower of the French heavy cavalry, — was not, 
however, so easily disposed of. Riding down on Overkirk 
when this officer was somewhat disordered by success, these 
superb horsemen clave their way through the astonished 
allied squadrons, and drove them back so far beyond the line 
of Ramillies that they would shortly have been enabled to 
take in reverse the foot battalions assailing that village. It 
was a critical moment, the instant which makes or mars a bat- 
tle. Perceiving the imminence of the danger, Marlborough 
in person headed a body of seventeen reserve squadrons which 
he found ready to hand, sent an urgent order recalling all the 
horse from the right, where lay twenty squadrons likewise in 
reserve, and himself led in the column against the cuirassiers, 
under a telling fire from the French batteries. In the fray 
he was all but captured, but his opportune charge for a 
moment checked the enemy ; and the aid of the twenty squad- 
rons from the right, which came up at a gallop but in fine 
close order, reestablished the battle at this point. At the 
same moment a body of Danish horse debouched from the 



MARLBOROUGH PUSHES HOME. 755 

Mehaigne lowlands and fell smartly on the right of the Mai- 
son du Roi, and another body of Dutch fell on their left. 
Thus surrounded, the French cuirassiers, finally losing heart, 
turned from the field ; and Marlborough, seizing the moment 
of their backward movement as opportune, and giving his men 
the impetus which success makes so telling after hours of 
combat, pressed on with all his troops to the top of the pla- 
teau. As is usual in offensive battles, Marlborough had out- 
numbered his opponent at the point of fighting contact, and 
the battle was won. But Villeroi was not so readily driven 
from the field ; he strove desperately to establish a new line by 
throwing back his right to Geest a Gerompant, and by hold- 
ing fast to Off uz and Autre Eglise, so as to form a convex 
order instead of the concave one with which he first received 
the allied attack. Kamillies was not yet taken, and that would 
make an outwork which might perhaps arrest the victors 
while he patched up the new line. But Marlborough gave 
him no time ; he knew too well how much the minutes count 
at the instant of victory. Though the plateau around Otto- 
mond was crowded with men of all arms, guns and caissons, 
much disordered and mixed up from the late desperate battle, 
he pushed on in whatever order he could. No one better 
understood the meaning of " Action, action, action ! " and 
while this advance was making, despite the hottest defense, 
Ramillies fell to the allies, and the ground was such that 
Villeroi could marshal no new line in any practicable order. 
Many a general would have now paused to re-form. Not so 
Marlborough ; there was no let up to his blows. A general 
advance all along the allied line was sounded, and the whole 
mass pushed on. Offuz and Autre Eglise were taken, sweep- 
ing the entire field clear of the French. In utterly disorgan- 
ized masses, bearing no semblance to an army, Villeroi sought 
refuge at Louvain. The British horse pursued the enemy 



756 IMMENSE RESULTS. 

almost to the gates of that city, on which Marlborough 
advanced next day. 

The French lost seven thousand killed and wounded, six 
thousand prisoners, fifty-two guns, eight standards and all 
their baggage. The allies lost one thousand and sixty-six 
men killed and three thousand six hundred and thirty-three 
wounded. Following the noble example of Gustavus as well 
as his own generous instincts, Marlborough showed great 
consideration for the enemy's wounded, who had equal care 
with his own. 

Ramillies won nearly all Austrian Flanders ; Brussels, 
Louvain, Mechlin and most other towns of Brabant opened 
their gates without delay. Only the coast towns, Antwerp, 
Ostende, Nieuport and Dunkirk, held out. The battle of 
Blenheim had saved Germany. Turin was to save Italy. 
Ramillies saved Holland ; and the Dutch put no bounds to 
their joy or gratitude. Marlborough was the national hero ; 
he was no longer hampered by the deputies. 

The discipline enforced by Marlborough had an equally 
happy effect, and went far to win the good-will of the country. 
On June 6 Antwerp surrendered, and Oudenarde followed 
suit. Siege was laid to Dunkirk, and that great fortress suc- 
cumbed on July 6. Menin followed August 22, Dendermonde 
September 5, A.th October 4. An aggregate of twenty thou- 
sand prisoners fell to Marlborough's arms this year. 

After this crushing defeat, Vendome was called back from 
Italy and took the place of Villeroi ; and twenty thousand 
reinforcements came to hand. But the moral depression 
caused by the defeat of Ramillies was so great that the 
French only pretended to defend the northern border of 
France. 



LX. 

TURIN. SEPTEMBER 7, 1706. 

If Marlborough won a great triumph at Ramillies, Eugene won an equally 
splendid victory at Turin. When he was on the Adige the French had begun 
to press Turin hard. Luckily Vendome was called from Italy to supplant Ville- 
roi, and the duke of Orleans, with Marsin as second, took command. Eugene 
determined to march to the relief of Savoy, and leaving the prince of Hesse on 
the Adige, crossed the Po and advanced rapidly along its south bank westward. 
The duke followed him, but Eugene got to the pass of Stradella first, which 
enabled him to pursue his march. Reaching Turin, he joined the duke, which 
gave him thirty-six thousand men to the sixty thousand of the French. The 
lines about Turin were very strong, but Eugene, after a careful reconnoissance, 
attacked them from the west, and so effectually did he follow up his assault 
that he drove the enemy out of their works, broke up their army and forced 
them into headlong retreat. As Ramillies saved Holland, so the battle of 
Turin saved Italy, and, moreover, it resulted in driving the French permanently 
from the land. Tbis triumph against a heavily intrenched enemy of nearly twice 
his strength was indeed a glorious one. Perhaps this campaign, including 
both the march and battle, is the best of the war. It bas few superiors in any 
war. 

If in the Netherlands Marlborough was helping to teach 
the world the advantage of battle over manoeuvring and 
intrenched lines, so, in this year, Prince Eugene in Italy gave 
us a brilliant lesson of the same nature. 

From the new emperor, Joseph I., Eugene received the 
same consideration and support which the crown had always 
vouchsafed him. Early in 1706 several columns of reinforce- 
ments were directed towards Italy, to the army which lay on 
the west bank of the Lake of Garda. Eugene reached Rove- 
redo in mid- April, and Gavardo April 20, but only to find the 
army in bad case. Its situation had not been over and above 









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ON THE ADIGE. 759 

secure, nor had the lines been sufficiently watched to have 
timely notice of the enemy's approach. 

On the 19th of April Vendome, who had forty-four thou- 
sand men and fighting orders, made a sudden attack on the 
imperial winter - quarters, which were under command of 
Count Reventlau during the absence of Prince Eugene, hop- 
ing to overwhelm his army and to push it quite out of Italy. 
Reventlau had been in an intrenched camp, but a threatened 
turning movement by way of San Marco induced him to come 
out into the open. The assault fell first on Montechiaro, 
which Vendome took, and then on Calcinato, with equal suc- 
cess. The troops retired over the bridge of San Marco in 
much disorder, with a loss of three thousand men. On his 
arrival Eugene collected some troops, and sought to hold a 
position he had previously occupied between Gavardo and 
Salo, but the French on April 22 pushed Salo hard. Ven- 
dome sought to cut him off by a flank march near the lake, 
and making up his mind to take the Adige route, Eugene 
retired by way of Eiva to the Triente country. In a rear- 
guard fight in Maderno, the enemy was worsted, and Eugene 
quietly marched around the lake and concentrated on the 
east shore, hoping to push unopposed down the Adige on the 
right bank. But as the French had taken possession of both 
sides of the lower part of the lake, he was forced to fight his 
way through to the other side of the river. Luckily the 
French had omitted to hold the passage at Chiuso, else they 
would have quite barred the imperial passage down the valley 
of the Adige. Prince Eugene marched through the Polesella 
valley, and, May 17, took post along the left bank at San 
Martino. He here awaited his reinforcements and pontoons, 
which on arrival would give him all told some thirty-eight 
thousand men and full equipment, not counting ten thousand 
Hessians still on the way. Vendome left thirty thousand 



760 VENDOME REPLACES VILLEROI. 

men to watch the west shore of Garda, and, committing the 
same error as Catinat, assumed a position in detachments 
from Salo down, a large part lying opposite the prince, on 
the right bank of the Adige. He had nearly forty thousand 
men thus employed. Here the armies remained two or three 
weeks inactive. Eugene could go no further until his rein- 
forcements came up to replace him when he left. 

Meanwhile La Feuillade had besieged Turin in May with 
forty-two thousand men and two hundred and thirty-seven 
guns and mortars ; and leaving twenty thousand men to 
defend the capital, the duke of Savoy took refuge with eight 
thousand men in the Cottian Alps at Luserna, and loudly 
called to Prince Eugene for aid. Determined to retrieve his 
last year's failure by moving to Piedmont along the right 
bank of the Po, Eugene left eight thousand men at Verona 
to hold the line of the Adige, which force was later joined by 
the prince of Hesse with his ten thousand, started with the 
rest in two detachments, July 4 and 5, down the left bank, 
and crossed at Boara and at Badia, below Castelbaldo, 
between the 9th and the 14th. So well concealed had been 
his operations that he met with but slight opposition, though 
there were twenty-seven thousand French on the right bank 
from Verona to Badia. 

Luckily for the Italian situation, the king now called Ven- 
dome from Italy to the Netherlands, where Villeroi had been 
defeated at Ramillies, and the duke of Orleans, with Marsin 
as second, was given the command. Vendome had been a 
worthy antagonist, and his removal was the death-blow to the 
French successes in Italy. Eugene was as fortunate in his new 
opponents as Marlborough had been in Villeroi. The change 
of command upset all calculations, and the new commander 
found himself face to face with an awkward duty; but he 
took some healthy measures, called in thirteen thousand men 



OPERATIONS ON THE PO. 761 

from La Feuillade, and placed ten thousand under Mendavi 
opposite the prince of Hesse. 

Prince Eugene had crossed the numerous canals and water- 
ways south of the Adige, and the Po at Polozella, by July 24. 
He was detained near Finale until, on July 27, he heard of 
the actual arrival of the prince of Hesse, when he moved 
upstream and over the Secchia past Carpi, and August 1 
over the Ledo canal ; thence up to the line of the Parmegiano, 
with a column nearly twenty-five thousand strong. 

The duke of Orleans, meanwhile, fell back behind the 
Mincio, and thinking to arrest Eugene's further march, he 
left thirty thousand men on that line, crossed at San Bene- 
detto with twenty-six thousand to the south bank of the Po, 
and took up a position on the Parmegiano. Finding his oppo- 
nent on hand, Prince Eugene reconnoitred, and ascertained 
that the duke lay behind a marsh made by the stream, where 
he could not be readily attacked, and concluded to turn him 
out of this position by the south. 

At this time the prince of Hesse began operations, and 
advanced to the Mincio, and the duke, lest the situation on 
the north bank should be changed to his disadvantage, left 
the Parmegiano, and retired across the Po, thus opening 
the road to Piedmont along its right bank ; and to cap the 
French troubles, when he reached the Mincio he found that 
the prince of Hesse had already secured the passage of that 
river at Goito. Thus, despite his rapid movements, he had 
failed to stop either of his opponents in their westward march. 
His activity had been weak and misplaced ; mere manoeu- 
vring between two enemies will not suffice ; it requires battle. 

Prince Eugene utilized the enemy's absence by capturing 
Carpi August 5, Correggio August 8, Finale and Reggio 
August 9 and 14, and advanced on and took Parma August 
15, where the troops were given on the 16th a day of rest on 



762 A RACE FOR STRADELLA. 

account of great heat ; and thence inarched to Piacenza. 
The season was dry, and the numerous streams did not 
greatly delay the march. 

The duke of Orleans recognized his mistake ; he now had 
one more chance to stop Eugene, and that was at the pass 
of Stradella, where the possession of the defile between the 
Apennines and the Po would have shut Eugene out from 
reaching Piedmont on the right bank of the river. It was 
the key to northwestern Italy, and could be held by a small 
body against a large army. We remember that it played its 
due part in Hannibal's campaign along the Po, as it always 
has in all operations in northern Italy. To his credit the 
duke of Orleans saw this chance, hurried seven thousand men 
ahead to this pass, and followed with the bulk of his army. 
The march was along the left bank, and the foot was carried 
in wagons to make speed. But Prince Eugene was fortunate, 
while the duke was not. So soon as he heard that the French 
were heading for Stradella, he himself speeded a detach- 
ment of seven thousand men towards the defile, followed 
after a few hours by a second one, and the prince later joined 
the column with all his cavalry. He reached San Giovanni 
July 21, and learned to his gratification that the commander 
of the leading detachment had seized the defile, and that the 
second one had gone on to Voghera. On the 23d the rest 
of the foot came up ; next day they marched to Yoghera, 
and on the 25th went into camp at Castelnuovo, while the 
van pushed on. On the 26th the van crossed the Bormida, 
and on the 27th it stood at the Tanaro. The army followed, 
marched between the fortresses of Alexandria and Tortona 
without blockading or besieging either, — an unusual pro- 
ceeding in those days, as they were held by French garrisons, 
— and marching to Nizza, crossed the Tanaro, August 28, at 
Isola, with van at Villafranca. From the Tanaro Eugene, 



THE ARMIES AT TURIN. 



763 



on the last day of August, joined the duke of Savoy on 
the upper Po, at Villastellona, whither the duke had come to 
meet him. Between them they had some thirty-six thousand 
men. The sick and baggage were sent to Alba. 

The duke of Orleans, having failed to anticipate Eugene 
at Stradella, and thus to prevent his junction with the duke 
of Savoy, still managed to get to Turin first, marching, as he 
did, by the shorter road up the left bank of the Po. With 




The Battle of Turin. 



La Feuillade he had ninety battalions and one hundred and 
thirty-eight squadrons, some sixty thousand men. 

Turin lies on the flat left bank of the Po, and at that day 
had a strong bridge-head and line of works on the hilly right 
bank. In his prolonged siege of the place, La Feuillade had 
directed his main attack against the citadel, and though the 
siege had lasted four months, and the town had been much 
bombarded, the whole operation had been so lamentably con- 
ducted that its works were still strong. A breach, to be sure, 
had been made in the citadel, but several assaults had been 



764 THE FRENCH ON THE DEFENSIVE. 

driven back. On the left bank was a line of contravallation, 
and the troops used in the siege were protected by a line of 
circumvallation a dozen or more miles long, whose left flank 
leaned on the Po and the right on the Stura, which falls into 
the Po not far below the city. The lines were cut by the 
Dora, which falls into the Po at Turin. 

The one policy of the French, who were two to one of the 
allies, was clearly to move on the imperial army and give it 
battle ; but in this matter the French generals were divided 
in opinion ; and finally Marsin, at the council of war of Sep- 
tember 5, exhibited instructions from Louis XIV. giving him 
the right above the duke of Orleans to decide what action 
should be taken in case of an attack on Turin ; and he pre- 
ferred to await the enemy in the circumvallation lines. This 
was a singular order to a supposed second in command and 
a marked indignity to the duke of Orleans, who was a better, 
if not an older, soldier. These circumvallation lines were, 
however, weak of themselves as well as weakly garrisoned, 
especially between the Stura and Dora rivers, where no at- 
tack had been anticipated by La Feuillade, and where at the 
moment were scarcely more than eight thousand men. 

It was in the highest degree unwise in the French to fight 
a strictly defensive battle. They were stronger than their 
adversaries, but their strength was wasted in the extent of 
their lines ; and the men, knowing that they were in superior 
force, lost much of their spirit behind intrenchments. The 
French generals believed that the allies were too weak to 
attack with any chance of success ; that they could not cross 
the Dora without exposing themselves to a dangerous sortie, 
and that therefore they would not try ; and it was for this 
reason that to the intrenchments near the Dora proper atten- 
tion had not been paid. This was a curious but not uncom- 
mon lapse of judgment. 



EUGENE'S COLUMNS. 765 

Meanwhile Eugene and the duke of Savoy crossed the 
upper Po and camped at Pianezza, six miles from Turin; 
they then passed around the lines of the besiegers by the 
south and west, leaving some bodies to make demonstrations 
from the east, and took up a position between the Stura and 
Dora, with headquarters at the castle of La Yeneria. A 
large convoy coming from France was cleverly seized by the 
duke, and came in good stead. 

The commandant of Turin, General Daun, was notified 
that next day, September 7, an attack would be made, of 
which a certain signal would be given. 

On the other side of the Po, across the bridge, on the 
Capuchin hill, lay General Alberghatti with a force of 
twenty thousand French, to shut in the city from the right 
bank. General Daun sent a force of six thousand militia 
across to the bridge-head to prevent Alberghatti from detail- 
ing any of his forces to aid the rest of the besiegers, or, in 
case he did so, to make a junction with a big convoy and six 
thousand Piedmontese troops which were waiting a chance to 
enter the city. 

After a careful reconnoissance Eugene saw that north of 
the Dora the French line was the weakest ; and it was here, 
on September 7, that the imperial army attacked the circum- 
vallation lines of the French. Eugene's orders for the attack 
are a model of minuteness, care and intelligence. He had 
thirty thousand men in line, of which six thousand were horse, 
and these he ployed into eight columns, and started from camp 
at daylight. His right leaned on the Dora, his left on the 
Stura, and he deployed just beyond artillery range. His 
foot stood in two lines, his cavalry in a third and fourth line ; 
there were three to four hundred paces between lines, and he 
delivered his assault about an hour before noon, with all the 
elan of which he was capable. 



766 A SHARP ATTACK. 

There were but from eight to ten thousand foot here and 
about four thousand horse ; and General Daun at once sent 
six thousand men from within walls to assail them in rear. 
The allied left was the first to reach the enemy's lines and 
to make an impression, as the right had less good ground to 
pass over. There was the usual swaying to and fro of an 
assaulting line, and the allied cavalry was once thrust back 
and threatened with demoralization ; but it was not long, 
under the always gallant personal conduct of Eugene, who 
here ran his risk with the junior officers, before the line of 
circumvallation was broken through and the French de- 
fenders driven back. The French reinforcements all came 
up too late, and were successively beaten in detail. The 
duke of Orleans had called for twelve thousand men from 
General Alberghatti on the right bank of the Po ; but this 
officer deemed himself neutralized by the six thousand Pied- 
montese who were trying to throw relief into Turin and by 
the bridge-head garrison, and did not respond. 

The garrison of Turin now made a sharper sally on the 
French' rear. The duke of Orleans and Field-Marshal 
Marsin were both wounded, the latter mortally ; and the 
French, ill-led and dispersed, were quite broken up and many 
driven into the Po and drowned. They lost two thousand 
killed, twelve hundred wounded and six thousand prisoners, 
over one hundred guns and all their baggage and material ; 
and, lacking leadership, fell back, not by way of Casal or the 
Milan region, where were Mendavi and a number of strong 
garrisons, but towards the Alps at Pinerolo, which direction 
Alberghatti also took, crossing the Po at Cavbretto. Their 
direct route to France via Susa was already cut off by the 
allied position. The allied loss was nine hundred and fifty 
killed and twenty-three hundred wounded. 

Meanwhile, the prince of Hesse, besieging Castiglione, had 



ITALY RESCUED. 767 

been attacked by Mendavi, who bad defeated and tbrown Mm 
back behind the Mincio with a loss of six thousand men. 
Had the beaten Turin army actually retired on Milan, the 
campaign might not have been entirely lost. But the allies 
now began gradually to capture the strong places in Pied- 
mont and the duchy of Milan, twenty-three of which fell to 
them in the succeeding three months; and seeing that he 
could no longer hold himself in Italy, Louis XIY. recalled 
the troops and gave up his fortresses against free exit for 
the garrisons. The victory at Turin had the same immense 
results which those at Blenheim and Kamillies had had. The 
allies gained all Italy, and were able to carry the war to 
the borders of France. Indeed, the results were greater, for 
Italy was permanently freed by this noted victory, as Ger- 
many and Holland were not. 

So splendid a success against an enemy double his strength 
rarely falls to the lot of any captain. This one was fairly 
earned, coming as it did from Eugene's decisive march to 
Piedmont, where he lay upon the communications of the 
French with France ; the forcing of battle at Turin after the 
selection of the best part of the line to attack ; and the good 
fortune which attended him. The prince's march to Pied- 
mont is one of his best operations. It was bold and well 
conceived. He threw up his communications with Germany, 
and thus all hope of reinforcements, for the duke of Savoy 
had but few troops left, as well as of victual, for the enemy 
held the entire country. The right bank of the Po was a 
difficult route, cut up by many streams ; and the defile of 
Stradella must be reached before the French could take it. 
The question of rationing his men was at that day an almost 
insuperable obstacle. But fortune this year smiled upon the 
prince, and lent herself to his bold and clever manoeuvres. 

The French made mistakes. Vendome beo-an with the 



768 THE MOST BRILLIANT CAMPAIGN. 

same error which Catinat had made, of trying to watch the 
entire line of the Adige ; but circumstances prevented the 
error from bearing fruit, and the calling away of this gen- 
eral was a great misfortune. Vendome had the only true 
theory : beat the enemy and Turin will fall. But the duke 
of Orleans worked on the converse plan. At all times the 
French were strong enough to overwhelm the allies, but Yen- 
dome had no chance to show what he might have done, and 
after his recall the French operated badly. They opened the 
road to Piedmont to Prince Eugene, did not dispute the 
defile at Stradella, and while of twice his strength at Turin, 
instead of moving out to fight him, remained in the Turin lines 
to be beaten. 

Had Vendome been kept in command, or had the French 
army retired on Milan, Prince Eugene's triumph might not 
have been so brilliant. Without underrating the splendor 
of this campaign, it must be granted that the errors of the 
French, and good fortune, helped him as much as Villeroi's 
weak methods helped Marlborough. But even a Caesar had 
sometimes to thank mere fortune that he was not over- 
whelmed ; and as Napoleon's brilliant successes were often due 
to the fatuity of his opponents, so with Eugene and Marl- 
borough. It was Hannibal alone who constantly worked 
against fortune, and fought able opponents. 

Here again battle had done more than manoeuvring. On 
the whole, this campaign is the most brilliant one conducted 
by any general during the War of the Spanish Succession. 




Pike Breaker. (16th Century.) 



LXI. 

OUDENARDE AND LILLE. JULY 11 AND OCTOBER 22, 1708. 

In 1707 little was done. In 1708 the French had one hundred thousand men 
near Mons, under the duke of Burgundy and Vendome ; Marlborough was at 
Brussels with sixty-five thousand men. Eugene's army was kept on the Rhine 
until other troops replaced it, when he was to join the Netherlands army. 
After some manoeuvring Marlborough, who feared that the French would take 
Oudenarde, determined on battle. Eugene was personally with him, though 
his army was still on the march from the Rhine. Vendome desired to fight the 
allies before Eugene's army could come up ; but Burgundy was slow and unde- 
cided. Finally Marlborough forced operations, and attacked the French while 
both armies were crossing the Scheldt below Oudenarde. Eugene joined in the 
battle and commanded part of Marlborough's army. After a long and bloody 
struggle — somewhat irregular in character — the allies turned the right flank 
of the French, enveloped them, and drove the wreck of their army back to Ghent. 
When Eugene's army arrived, he and Marlborough had one hundred and 
twenty thousand men, with which they undertook the siege of Lille. The 
French had ninety-six thousand men, but they did nothing effective to inter- 
rupt it, and finally, despite a handsome defense by Marshal Boufflers, Lille fell, 
and the French retired from Flanders. 

The spring after the battle of Ramillies (1707) Vendome, 
with his eighty thousand men, was ordered to operate defen- 
sively against the allied army of but thirty-six thousand. 
Marlborough was inactive ; but it was the Dutch officials who 
held him back from active work, quite as much as it was lim- 
ited numbers, and the entire campaign was composed of unim- 
portant manoeuvres and petty operations. The theatre of 
war had become more complicated. It was decided among 
the allies to protect Savoy against a probable French attack, 
as well as to prevent French reinforcements from being dis- 
patched to Spain, by undertaking an invasion of southern 



770 TOULON OPERATION. 

France ; but this campaign had no better result. Prince 
Eugene and the duke of Savoy undertook the expedition into 
France by way of the Maritime Alps, in connection with a 
British-Dutch fleet, and operated against Toulon. After a 
long and difficult inarch, the army reached that port at the 
end of July, and found the garrison so depleted that energetic 
measures would have resulted in its capture. But the duke 
insisted on a regular siege ; this lasted a month, and during 
the delay the place was relieved by the French. Eugene con- 
ducted a handsome retreat, capturing Susa at its close. The 
whole affair was a failure, apparently owing to jealousy and 
consequent want of energy of the duke of Savoy. That the 
blundering was not Eugene's there is clear evidence ; and the 
operation does not bear his thumb-marks. It had no special 
effect on Spain, for on April 25, at the battle of Almanza, 
Marshal Berwick, in command of the French forces, totally 
defeated the allies, and placed Spain in the possession of the 
Bourbons. On the other hand, with an army of thirteen 
thousand men, General Daun conquered Naples and ejected 
the Bourbons ; but to offset this success, Villars beat an 
imperial army on the Rhine, destroyed the Stollhofen lines, 
invaded Swabia and levied contributions on the land. 

In 1708 the French Netherlands army was raised to a 
force, not including garrisons, of one hundred thousand men, 
and concentrated near Mons, from which quarter it was to 
operate under the duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis 
XIV., with Vendome as his second and mentor, on a plan 
which should be offensive, but without running any serious 
risk. Villars had a small force on the borders of Switzer- 
land. An army of fifty thousand men, under the elector of 
Bavaria and Field-Marshal Berwick (who, after his victory 
at Almanza, had been ordered north), stood at Strasburg, and 
was to be faced by the elector of Hanover ; but until the 



LACK OF MONEY. 771 

forces of the latter were all concentrated, Prince Eugene, 
with his army of thirty-five thousand Saxons, Hessians, Pa- 
latinate troops and imperialists, was ordered to remain near 
Coblentz, and when relieved to march to the Netherlands to 
join the Anglo-Dutch army under Marlborough. The excel- 
lent result of the generous cooperation of these two captains 
was recognized. It was manifest that the heavy work was 
to be done this year in the Low Countries, and Eugene and 
Marlborough met in the Hague in April to confer as to the 
plan of action ; but the imperial exchequer was so empty that 
many serious additional duties were laid upon the prince. 
Well it was that the sea powers had abundant resources and 
were willing to use them. Eugene had actually been sent to 
campaign in a friendly land, where he might not take sup- 
plies, and without money wherewith to buy them. 

There were also annoying difficulties with all the German 
princes, — the electors of Hanover, Saxony, Mainz and the 
Palatinate, and the landgrave of Hesse, all of whom disliked 
the secondary role they had to play, and made impossible 
demands. But the diplomatic good-nature of Marlborough 
and Eugene finally smoothed over these troubles before the 
campaign opened. 

Marlborough had been lying near Brussels with sixty-five 
thousand men (English, Dutch, Danes, Hanoverians and 
Prussians) and one hundred and thirteen guns. There had 
been some anticipation of treachery on the part of the garri- 
son of Antwerp, and fearing that Vendome, who had been 
moving into Flanders, would go thither to take advantage of 
the fact, Marlborough marched, May 24, to Hal, to bar the 
way to that important harbor. The French, May 26, marched 
to Soignies, and on June 1 moved further on and camped 
between Genappe and Braine l'Alleud, about three leagues 
from Marlborough, on the allies' left flank. Marlborough 



772 VEN DOME'S ABLE MANOEUVRING. 

did not understand Vendome's purpose, but from his position 
conceived fears for Louvain or even Brussels ; and as he 
needed to keep the road open for Eugene, who was by and 
by to come on from Coblentz, he moved by a quick night 
march, June 2-3, to a position near Louvain. He urgently 
needed Eugene's assistance, but the latter could not yet 
leave the Rhine, for Berwick was on hand in force, and 
the Hanoverian contingent had not yet come up. Both 
armies here remained a month. Marlborough would have 
liked to attack Vendome and cut the knot by a battle ; but 
he did not feel strong enough to do so. He had not — no 
one ever had — the utter disregard of numbers displayed 
by Frederick. Few ever led such battalions as the last of 
the kings. 

Vendome was energetic meanwhile ; he had a very clear 
purpose. His diversion towards Louvain was a simple ruse 
to keep Marlborough's eyes away from the Scheldt. The 
provinces acquired by the allies as a result of Ramillies were 
full of malcontents. They were Catholic ; the people cor- 
dially hated the Dutch ; and the latter were not wise in their 
treatment of the case, but levied taxes remorselessly. Ghent 
was a most important place. In the hands of the allies it 
was a sort of advanced work which defended Flanders, and 
a base from which Lille, the great French fortress, could be 
threatened. Vendome proposed to have it, and for some 
time had been working with the authorities within walls to 
induce them to play into his hands. In this he succeeded, 
and by able dispositions, energy and a sharp march by his 
left on the night of July 4 to the Senne, the French got well 
ahead of Marlborough, advanced across the Dender, and on 
July 5 one of their parties seized Ghent by a coup de main. 
Another party laid hold of Bruges on the same day, and 
Plassendael, one of the defenses of Ostende, was captured by 



MARLBOROUGH REPLIES. 773 

storm July 10. This was a blow straight in the face of the 
Anglo-Dutch. 

On learning of Vendome's operations Marlborough, on 
July 5, had advanced with the hope of arresting his progress ; 
but the French marshal was too speedy, placed himself back 
of Alost to protect Ghent, and Marlborough took position at 
Asche, west of Brussels. He was ready to attack the enemy 
on the Dender July 7, but the harm had been already done, 
and battle would correct nothing. He now feared the enemy 
would capture Oudenarde, as was indeed Vendome's next 
projected step ; and he threw into it a force taken from the 
garrisons of neighboring places, sufficient to hold it, just 
before the French came to invest it. 

These successes of the French had the effect of depressing 
the Dutch to so alarming an extent that the English com- 
mander determined to force a battle even before the arrival 
of Eugene's corps, if he could do so, lest the Dutch should 
become so far demoralized as to conclude a separate peace. 
Indeed, Marlborough, whose health was far from good, was 
himself much down-hearted, and it was well that Eugene 
arrived at this time to cheer him up. An occasion was not 
long in presenting itself, and Marlborough, with the counte- 
nance of Eugene, who, escorted by a small cavalry force, had 
hurried ahead of his corps, was not slow to embrace it. Hav- 
ing failed to seize Oudenarde out of hand as he had Ghent, 
Vendome determined to besiege the place, and detached a 
force to make preparation for so doing. The fortress was 
central, commanded a passage of the Scheldt, whose high 
banks make it an easily defended river, and gave its possessor 
singular facilities for manosuvring in both Brabant and Flan- 
ders. To cover the projected siege as well as Ghent and 
Bruges, the French position between Oordegen and Alost was 
as good as any. Marlborough, still fearing for this impor- 



774 ABLE TURNING MOVEMENT. 

tant fortress, to him a link in his home communications, as 
well as apprehensive that the enemy would occupy and eat 
out all northern Flanders, thus consuming victual he needed 
himself, determined to forestall both accidents. His plan to 
secure battle was to move on Vendome's communications with 
France, instead of directly on his main body ; and this had 
manifest advantages, as the event showed. He hurried a 
detachment of three regiments each of foot and horse, and 
six guns, under General Cadogan, July 9, to the Dender at 
Lessines, with orders to bridge it ; the army moved forward 
by its left to the same place on the 11th, and Cadogan was 
again sent with sixteen battalions and thirty squadrons to 
bridge the Scheldt below Oudenarde. The main force speed- 
ily followed, and next day reached and stood ready to pass 
that river. In forty-eight hours the troops had marched 
some forty miles, had crossed one river and made ready to 
cross a second. This was fast work at that day, good for 
any day. 

Hoping to prevent the allies' passage of the Dender, of 
the march on which he was informed, Yendome had, July 9, 
advanced to Ninove, where, finding that he was too late to 
accomplish the end in view, and ascertaining that the allies 
were bridging the Scheldt, he conceived fears for Ghent, and 
in order to cover that fortress, turned back to the river, 
which he prepared to cross on his bridge at Gavre, a short 
distance below Marlborough's bridges. The Oudenarde 
detachment was ordered in. 

It was apparent to Vendome that the thing to do was to 
fight Marlborough before Eugene's corps came up, and he 
advised his chief, the duke of Burgundy, to cross the Scheldt 
as soon as he could possibly put the troops over, and be ready 
to fall upon the enemy. In pursuance of this idea, in fact, 
Vendome sent to the other side the van under General Biron, 



VENDOME IN THE LEASH. 775 

with orders to hold the allies till the French army should 
have got over, so that the whole force could then fall upon 
them while in the confusion of crossing. Biron occupied 
Eyne. The operation could very well have been carried out, 
as the allies at this moment were still busy completing their 
bridges and the French had their own all ready ; and when 
the first allied detachment, under Cadogan, pushed out 
towards the high ground, they ran across these very forces of 
Vendome's. No better plan could have been devised, for the 
French were several hours in advance of Marlborough ; but 
it was not promptly carried out, and its very essence was 
speed. The duke of Burgundy had been, so far, a passive 
tool in the hands of his able second ; but as dangers thick- 
ened, and the pulse of Vendome, soldier-like, began to throb 
in quicker beats, the duke grew nervous and undecided, and 
instead of pushing the troops over the river, as advised by 
his lieutenant, consumed the precious time in coming to a 
conclusion as to what he had best do. He appeared to be 
afraid to go into a general engagement, and finally thought 
wise to return to Ghent. But it was already too late to avoid 
the one or accomplish the other. It was not long after noon 
that Cadogan had crossed the Scheldt and pushed his horse 
and twelve battalions of foot out to the higher land towards 
Eyne and to its left. He soon struck the French van from 
Gavre, which stopped him in a smart encounter and seized 
Eyne. Notwithstanding the laxness of Burgundy, Vendome 
still hoped to be able to catch the English astride the river, 
and as troops got over, he formed line of battle on the high 
ground behind the Norken. Some eighty thousand men were 
thus set up. Meanwhile Marlborough and Eugene pushed 
forward the crossing, and by two o'clock had got over a sub- 
stantial part of their equal numbers. It had been a race of 
speed and purpose : Marlborough and Eugene were instinct 



776 



BURGUNDY HESITATES. 



with a single idea, while Vendome was hampered in all he 
did by his inexpert and hesitating chief. Had he been sole 
in command, the battle of Oudenarde might not have proven 
an allied victory. Some critics underrate Vendome's ability 




Battle of Oudenarde. 

in this campaign. At times he exhibited his best qualities ; 
at others he lapsed into his indolent mood. 

Vendome's idea of the best "way to fight the battle was to 
drive an attack firmly in on the allied right, and by breaking 
it, cut it from the river and the bridges ; and he dispatched 
a force under General Pfiffer from the left to open up the 
manoeuvre ; but Burgundy, technically in command, would 
not permit the operation, alleging unsuitability of ground 
near the river. Advancing along the Ghent road, Pfiffer 
did, however, get as far as Huerne and Eyne. These contin- 



THE FRENCH ATTACK. Ill 

ued delays and irresolute orders were fatal to the French. 
Burgundy now desired to retreat, but Vendome showed him 
that it was no longer feasible ; the enemy was already upon 
him. The brilliant opportunity for overwhelming the allies 
while astride the river had faded as the sun grew lower. 

As the allied troops were got upon the field, they were 
marshaled on the first high ground to the west from Eyne, 
and so soon as enough men were on hand, Cadogan was again 
pushed in on that village, which after a sharp half hour's 
fighting he took, by attacking it in front with his foot and 
riding around its left with his squadrons. Pfiffer with- 
drew to the vicinity of the Norken. Added to Burgundy's 
fatuity, it was Cadogan's activity which had prevented the 
French from disturbing the crossing, now completed under 
the cover he had afforded. 

The position behind the Norken was a serious one to 
attack ; and when he found that he had been prevented by 
Burgundy from seasonably initiating an offensive battle, Ven- 
dome bethought him to invite attack here. But nothing 
would suit his chief, who now ordered some cavalry forward 
from the right to see if he could occupy the Huerne plateau. 
This force he shortly followed up by some foot, and presently 
a large part of the French right was marching out to the 
attack. 

It was well after four when the French attack became 
serious, and by this time the allies were ready for it. The 
cavalry force pushed out from the right, having met some of 
the Prussian horse, fell back to Royeghem. There was no 
system in the manoeuvres of the French, who, now that their 
opportunity had passed, advanced their right in earnest. 
Divining that they would make their main effort with this 
wing, Marlborough had deployed his troops accordingly, 
pushed forward the forces from Eyne towards Huerne and 



778 HEAVY INFANTRY FIGHTING. 

Herlehem, and threw out small parties to seize and defend 
the woods and hedges beyond the line, so as to hold the 
advanced ground for the troops to occupy as they arrived. 
The Prussian horse was sent out to the left of this body 
beyond Huerne, while Shaecken was held by twenty battal- 
ions. As yet little artillery had been got up ; time had not 
sufficed. 

No sooner had Marlborough reached this advanced position 
than the French right was upon him. Thirty battalions of 
French and Swiss guards debouched from the covered country 
on Groemvelde, fell on a small allied force posted there, cut 
it up, and pushed on down the little brook, taking Marlbor- 
ough's advanced force absolutely in reverse. Not slow to 
perceive or utilize their advantage, the French all too soon 
caught the inspiration of success, and already the cry of vic- 
tory began to resound along their lines. But Marlborough 
was happily equal to the occasion. Eugene, the ever ready, 
was at hand ; to him Marlborough confided the work upon 
the right, giving him his English troops, while, seizing the 
Dutch and Hanoverians, he set himself to stem the threaten- 
ing tide of defeat on the left of Schaecken. Foreseeing that 
the French would soon attack in force on their immediate 
front, he sent twenty more battalions under Count Lottum to 
Eugene, intending that by and by the decisive blow shoidd 
be given by the right ; so that the prince now had about one 
third of all the allied foot — sixty battalions — under his 
command, — more than twice what Marlborough retained on 
the left. Well that it was so, for the French columns between 
Groemvelde and Schaecken were making desperate efforts to 
follow up their supposed gain, and Eugene had all he could 
do to hold them in check. Moreover, at this moment the 
infantry of the French left-centi-e advanced across the Nor- 
ken, and the cavalry of their left followed to sustain them. 



A HANDSOME MANOEUVRE. 779 

Cadogan was hustled out of Herlehem by the sudden 
onslaught ; but the reinforcement enabled Eugene to reestab- 
lish the fight, and having first driven the French back across 
the Eyne, he turned to the plateau and broke the French first 
line, while the Prussian horse followed up this gain and 
charged clean through the French second line, being only 
stopped by the reserve of cuirassiers in the rear, which drove 
it back. 

There being few guns of either army on the field to make 
a pronounced effect, the battle was one of musketry only, 
and it took the form of desperate contests by small bodies at 
every little patch of woods, every hedge, ditch or hamlet. 

Opposite Marlborough west of Schaecken, where he was 
striving to turn the tide of French success with the Dutch 
and Hanoverians, the fighting was similar and equally severe. 
Every obstacle was utilized, and a series of partial and desper- 
ate encounters resulted all along the S-shaped line. Cavalry 
was of small use in the country covered with hedges and 
copses, unless dismounted. But the foot fought tenaciously, 
and finally, under Marlborough's strong will, the allied line 
compelled the retreat from their advanced position of the 
French, who too soon had deemed the victory secure. But 
it was only by desperate hand to hand fighting that they 
were forced back to Diepenbeck ; and here ensued a pause. 
Neither party could gain a step. 

Marlborough's eye was keen. Spying the windmill of 
Oycke on his left, he detached Overkirk with the reserve 
cavalry and twenty Dutch battalions to occupy it, move 
beyond and turn the French right. With marked speed, 
despite the heavy ground cut up by all manner of obstacles, 
the veteran general made his way thither, and defeating a 
French force which held the castle of Bevere, threw it off 
toward the west. He soon got himself into a position on the 



780 THE FRENCH SURROUNDED. 

French right flank, which was in the air, and, extending his 
left under the prince of Orange as far as he could reach, 
he enveloped their forces from Bevere to Royeghem. This 
manoeuvre was in reality what won the battle, for the French 
troops along the Eyne, startled by a fire in their rear, quickly 
fell back, and in much confusion, and this was carried 
throughout the army, and grew into a panic as darkness 
settled on the field. From a species of convex order, the 
allies now swung forward into a huge concave semicircle, and 
drove the French before them at every point, crowding them 
in more and more. Thus huddled together on the plain, there 
was little chance to fight to good effect, and even the stoutest 
resistance of the French gendarmes, who did their duty 
nobly, could effect nothing. 

Vendome sought to stem the tide by a heroic assault on the 
right-centre and right of the allies with all the forces he 
could muster on his left ; but cheered with the marked suc- 
cess of the allied left, Eugene held his own against the heavy 
onslaught. The ground was so much cut up that the French 
could not advance in order, and the Bavarian horse held 
bravely to its line on the edge of the plain. Eugene now 
advanced his wing to cut off the enemy from the river, and so 
fully did the concave order of the enveloping force complete 
the circle, that the two outer flanks met on the heights in 
the French rear, and indeed exchanged volleys at each other 
in the dark. 

It was through this gradually narrowing gap that the 
French left and centre made their escape. Their right was 
nearly all taken, a few only making their way through open- 
ings in the allied line to Bevere and thence towards France ; 
and Eugene captured prisoners from their left wholesale. It 
occurred to him to have the French "appel" (assembly) 
beaten by his drums, which brought in a vast number of 



A SEVERE DEFEAT. 781 

men to swell his prisoners. Had daylight lasted, the French 
army would have been forced into surrender. 

The French lost three thousand killed, four thousand 
wounded, nine thousand prisoners, three thousand deserters, 
one thousand officers and one hundred standards. The allied 
loss was two thousand killed and three thousand wounded ; 
or, as otherwise stated, only eight hundred and twenty-five 
killed and two thousand two hundred wounded. 

In this battle of Oudenarde the French army was almost 
broken up. Vendome was the one who most contributed to 
repair the disaster. He gathered a handful of troops less 
demoralized than the others, formed a rear-guard, arrested 
the flying army and reestablished a new line three or four 
miles in front of Ghent. When next day (July 12) Marl- 
borough sent twelve battalions and forty squadrons on Ghent, 
expecting to complete his yesterday's work, the force was 
received and checked by Vendome at this place. Shortly 
after, the French army fell back through Ghent and took up 
a position with its back to the sea, behind fortified lines and 
the Bruges and Ghent canal. With a heavy force at this 
point, from which Brussels could be threatened, Vendome 
believed that Marlborough would not advance into France. 
Ypres, with its fortified lines, which the French had built to 
hold the Lys-Scheldt region, soon fell to an expeditionary 
force sent out under the Prussian marshal Lottum ; but 
nothing further was immediately undertaken; Marlborough 
moved up to Helchin on the Scheldt, and later, to a position 
on the Lys above Menin. 

About the 15th of July Eugene's corps arrived at Brus- 
sels, thirty-five thousand strong ; and to strengthen the 
French, the duke of Berwick who, when he became aware 
that troops were moving from the Rhine country towards the 
Netherlands, had left part of his army in situ, and had 



782 A MARCH ON PARIS? 

headed with the rest to the assistance of Vendome, also came 
up from the middle Rhine, with twenty-four thousand men, 
and took post near Valenciennes and Douay. It now appeared 
how valuable had been Marlborough's action in moving on 
the communications of the French army before engaging it. 
He had thrust the most important force of the enemy back 
into a corner of Flanders, and there was no army left except 
that of Marshal Berwick between his own divisions and the 
French capital. How should he utilize the favorable posi- 
tion? 

At Brussels, Ath and on the Lys, with one hundred and 
twenty thousand men, the allies lay between the two French 
armies, Vendome's large numerically but demoralized by 
defeat, and Berwick's not strong enough to stand long against 
their heavy onset flushed with victory. It has been suggested 
by some critics that the joint commanders should have now 
marched on one or other of these divided forces. But it is 
never easy at any one era to frame your military work to the 
pattern of future critics of another era; and as Vendome 
was for the moment neutralized by defeat, and Berwick by 
lack of numbers, there were many other schemes for reducing 
the land equally advantageous for the allied commanders to 
consider. Both of the French armies were perhaps in their 
judgment too strongly placed to warrant attack, when equal 
results could be otherwise obtained. Whatever their reasons, 
nothing of the kind was attempted. The month of July was 
consumed in raids for material and forage, or in other small 
war by both armies. 

In discussing plans, Marlborough is said to have advised an 
invasion of France and a march on Paris. In view of the 
fact that Eugene could have been left behind to prevent 
Vendome from mischievous diversions in Flanders while the 
invading army should be absent, of the comparative prox- 



NOT DEEMED SAFE. 



783 



imity of the French capital, and of the lack of strong forces 
in his front, this was much the same operation as the march 
to Vienna urged on Gustavus after the battle of Breitenfeld, 
and which so many critics still maintain he should have under- 
taken. But Eugene could not have been given a force large 
enough to contain both Vendome and Berwick, who would 
at once have united forces, without reducing- Marlborough's 




Brussels-Lille Region. 

army below the number requisite for such an invasion ; and 
the two French armies, the heavy garrisons of the intervening 
fortresses and the militia of the provinces were too great 
an array in his rear to make the operation safe for the Eng- 
lish general. In any event, the Dutch deputies would not 
hear of Marlborough's absenting himself from the Low 
Countries while Vendome remained there ; and the suggestion 
was incontinently shelved. Eugene was inclined at first to 
agree with Marlborough ; but he now thought that prior to 



784 LILLE AIMED AT. 

such an operation, some great fortress on the frontier should 
be taken as a point d 'appui and magazine. Obstinate as 
Marlborough was in the prosecution of a manoeuvre to which 
he had put his hand, he was equally diplomatic and reasona- 
ble in the cabinet, and he was moreover unable to insist on 
his own view. The allies decided to undertake the siege of 
Lille, which Eugene was to run while Marlborough should 
cover it by posting himself between Oudenarde and Tournay. 

The presence of Vendome in his lines between Ghent and 
Bruges made the undertaking far from an easy one. Lack- 
ing the navigation of the Scheldt, now interrupted by the 
French position, the ordnance, munitions and victual had to 
come overland from Holland ; and huge convoys must be got 
from Brussels to Lille safe from Vendome's interruption. 
Nothing exhibits the severity of the blow which the battle of 
Oudenarde inflicted on the French more than the fact that 
they confined themselves during all these preparations strictly 
to minor schemes. 

Lille, captured in 1667, now chief frontier fortress of 
France and commanding the Lys-Scheldt country, was not 
only one of the masterpieces of Vauban, but it was held 
by an exceptionally big garrison — fifteen thousand men 
— under that celebrated soldier, Marshal Boufflers, who, 
shrewdly anticipating an investment, had thrown himself into 
the place at the end of July. The troops were mostly raw, 
but their spirit was excellent. The means of defense was 
ample ; the scheme had been drawn up by Vauban himself, 
and was under control of his nephew, General Vauban, who 
was serving in the town; and no stone was left unturned to 
make the defense a success. Many celebrated French offi- 
cers and noblemen were within walls, and many well-known 
foreigners joined the army of the besiegers, — among them 
perhaps the most noteworthy, a slender lad of twelve, later the 



VENDOME REMAINS INACTIVE. 



785 



great Marshal Saxe. The siege, whichever way it turned, 
was destined to be a remarkable one, — for a large and amply 
equipped army was to conduct it ; this was protected by a 
larger one ; and a third of over one hundred thousand men 
lay ready to interrupt it. 

The first great step was to get the initial convoy safely to 
the place, without an attack by Vendome. Luckily the latter 
never dreamed of a 
siege of Lille ; he 
imagined Mons to be 
the objective of the 
convoy of which he 
had heard, and he 
made no other mo- 
tion to disturb it 
than to send a col- 
umn of eighteen thou- 
sand men part way 
to the Dender. In- 
deed he jeered at the 
idea of so able a man 
as Eugene undertak- 
ing so impossible a 
thing. The convoy 
was well conducted. 
It consisted of five 

thousand wagons containing one hundred and twenty heavy 
guns, sixty mortars and twenty howitzers, was fifteen miles 
long, and left Brussels August 6, — via Soignies and Ath, 
whence it turned off by way of Helchin towards Lille. The 
Brussels garrison protected it as far as Ath ; thence the 
imperialists undertook its safety to Helchin, where Marl- 
borough received and escorted it. The details of its man- 




Siege of Lille. 



786 BERWICK JOINS VENDOME. 

agenient furnish a fruitful study in the art of protecting 
convoys. Marshal Berwick, who had pushed forward to St. 
Amand, had suggested to Vendome the advisability of inter- 
rupting the allies' plan by moving in force to some point 
between Brussels and Lille ; but Vendome, who had his lazy 
as well as energetic moods, would not listen to him. 

While Eugene undertook the siege with forty thousand 
men, Marlborough, with a force stated between sixty and 
seventy thousand, took up his position at Helchin. This was 
a well-chosen place, from which Marlborough could readily 
scout the country, or move to any threatened point ; and in 
order to facilitate the speedy delivery of supplies, six bridges 
were built at various places on the Scheldt. 

So soon as the head of the big convoy reached Lille, 
August 14, Eugene began his operations. Ten thousand 
men were set at work on the lines of circumvallation and 
contra vallation, which were nine miles in extent. Long before 
these were completed, and under fire of the besieged and 
some sorties, Eugene opened his trenches on the night of 
August 22-23. Two attacks were chosen, both on the north 
of the town, one on either side of the Deule, and opposite 
the horn-works at the gates of St. Andre and of the Made- 
leine. On August 24 fire was opened; the second parallel 
was finished on the 25th, and a heavy fire was at once begun. 
Sorties were frequent, in one of which the works erected at 
the chapel of the Madeleine were destroyed. 

On August 30 a junction was made between the armies of 
Vendome and Berwick. It had required a great deal of per- 
suasion to induce Vendome to throw up his Ghent-Bruges 
lines ; but he finally left La Motte in Ghent with twenty 
thousand men, and moved via Oordegen and Ninove on 
Grammont, while Berwick advanced from Mons towards the 
same place. After the junction the army — under supreme 



THEY DECIDE ON ATTACK. 787 

orders of the duke of Burgundy — marched to Tournay, 
crossed the Scheldt and camped on the west of that for- 
tress. As Burgundy was a mere figurehead, and Vendome 
and Berwick, both able men, were at. swords' points, there 
was small unity in the French army. Marlborough had made 
a movement to interrupt the operation by which the French 
thus concentrated, but could not do so. The French gen- 
erals now had a force of over one hundred thousand men, and 
though their counsels remained divided, there was manifestly 
but one thing to do, and that was to relieve Lille ; with which 
intent, on September 2 they started towards the beleaguered 
place, and soon took up a position along the Marque on its 
east bank, hoping to find a chance to raise the siege. Marl- 
borough was early instructed of their advance, which he had 
been expecting, at once guessed their object, and, anticipat- 
ing the manoeuvre, slipped in between them and Lille, and 
himself on September 5 assumed a position behind the 
Marque. He was none too soon. Within two hours after 
he had established himself the French van came up. The 
enemy had with them some two hundred guns. 

Either Vendome or Berwick of his own motion would have 
fought ; but as orders from the court of Versailles had 
impressed caution, and the two generals were so jealous of 
each other and agreed so ill that Burgundy could not control 
them, no plan of action could be agreed upon. Finally, on 
referring the case to Versailles, the king sent the war minister 
on to decide the action to be taken. Chamillart knew nothing 
of war, but he concluded that a battle might be delivered to 
advantage, and Vendome and Berwick moved closer to Marl- 
borough, taking up a position between the Marque and the 
Deule ; to meet which Marlborough had already constructed 
a strong line to face them. But after all this preparation, 
except a two days' cannonade, no attack was made. Eugene 



788 HANDSOME ASSAULTS. 

detached enough of his besieging force to run Marlborough's 
strength up to eighty-five thousand men, and battle was anx- 
iously awaited, but in vain. The colleagues indeed were 
eager to attack the French, but the Dutch deputies, content 
with the situation, vetoed the project, and Marlborough then 
fortified his position. Finally, September 15 Vendome and 
Berwick returned to Tournay and stretched out towards Oude- 
narde, and Marlborough, following, camped near the Scheldt. 
Though still between Lille and the French, they yet had 
managed so cleverlv as to sever the allies' communications 
with Brussels, and only the road to Menin remained open. 
Shortly the French captured the bridges over the Scheldt, 
and what they had not accomplished by a battle, they now 
had a prospect of accomplishing by famine. 

In the siege-lines, sorties and assaults were of daily occur- 
rence, and the fire from both sides was constant ; but despite 
hearty pushing, the progress of the siege was slow ; Boufflers 
was as able as Lille was strong. Not until September 7, 
when an assault in force at a loss of three thousand men gave 
the allies a footing on the works, was there any special gain ; 
and with Ghent, Bruges,' Douay, Tournay, all in French 
hands, the case was beginning to look desperate. On Sep- 
tember 20 another assault in force, headed by a column of 
five thousand picked English troops, was delivered ; though 
given with the utmost gallantry, it was thrice repulsed, when 
Eugene in person headed the fourth assault, and after two 
hours' fighting a good lodgment was effected, at a loss in the 
English column of two thousand killed and wounded. Eugene 
was himself among the wounded, a fact which for a few days 
seriously increased Marlborough's duties. On September 23 
still another assault was delivered in two columns of five 
thousand men ; and another lodgment was effected at a loss 
of one thousand killed and wounded. 



LILLE SUCCUMBS. 789 

Both besiegers and besieged were getting out of powder ; 
but the French cunningly introduced a supply into the town 
by some eighteen hundred horsemen, who, each carrying a 
sixty-pound sack, managed to break through the investing 
lines ; while at the same time, near the end of September, 
Marlborough managed to replace his exhausted store from 
England via Ostende, by a convoy ably led, but with a loss 
of at least one thousand men. The siege still dragged along. 
On September 30 yet another stout assault was delivered ; the 
fire from the works never ceased, and gradually the capacity 
of the town to resist was destroyed. Finally, on October 22, 
just before a final assault was to be made, Marshal Boufflers 
surrendered the town and retired into the citadel, where 
he held himself six weeks longer, nor capitulated until 
December 11, notwithstanding a number of assaults, in 
which, as was his habit, Eugene frequently led the column. 

No commander of a great army can be praised for thus 
risking his life. Marlborough was less wont to be tempted 
out of the general conduct of operations into such moods of 
daring. But while condemning the act, one cannot but ad- 
mire the dash of the imperialist, in whose diminutive body 
throbbed the heart of a lion, as in his brain there worked a 
military intellect not surpassed by any man of his generation. 

Out of a force of fifteen thousand men, increased by eigh- 
teen hundred horsemen, the garrison lost all but four thou- 
sand five hundred. The allied loss was three thousand six 
hundred and thirty-two killed and eight thousand three hun- 
dred and twenty-two wounded ; but many more died of sick- 
ness. It was the victory of Oudenarde which so demoralized 
the French that they did not interfere to better effect with 
this memorable siege. 

Vendome had rejoined the force at Ghent. Burgundy and 
Berwick remained on the Scheldt, where, from Tournay to 



790 THE FRENCH CORDON. 

Oudenarde, they fortified all the crossings with carefully 
constructed works, often in double and triple lines, purposing 
to cut the allies permanently from Brussels. From Ghent 
Vendome moved out and captured a number of small places 
in front of Bruges and Ostende, opened the sluices at Plas- 
sendael near Ostende and at Nieuport, and overflowed the 
country so as to cut off Marlborough's line of supply from 
England. The latter moved across the Lys to attack Ven- 
dome, but the Frenchman retired to Bruges. The flood and 
the capture of Lessinghe by Vendome obliged Marlborough 
to send foraging parties all over the country and well into 
Picardy, to victual the army, as well as to build high-wheeled 
carts to haul powder through the inundated districts. At the 
beginning of November the French generals were ordered by 
Louis XIV. to extend their line along the Scheldt, and to 
take up positions all around Lille in a great semicircle of 
fifty leagues. The cordon thus formed lay at Bethime, Arras, 
Douay, St. Amand, Saulces near Tournay, the right bank of 
the Scheldt to Ghent, and behind the canal to Bruges. 
Small bodies only were placed along the cordon, except at 
Tournay, Melchin, Ghent and behind the canal. The object 
of this plan was to cut the allies off from both the coast and 
Brussels, and meanwhile to protect France. The weakness 
of so long a line did not occur to the king; but it is cer- 
tain that Vendome can have had nothing to do with the 
scheme. His ability in this campaign had been overlooked, 
and his wonderful services of the past forgotten, — a fact to 
which his own difficult disposition contributed not a little. 
Both armies thus remained a month, when Berwick was 
again sent to the Rhine. 

At the end of November the French dispatched a body of 
fifteen thousand men under the elector of Bavaria, who 
moved from Mons by Braine l'Alleud and Hal, behind the 



CONSUMMATE ABILITY. 791 

Scheldt curtain, to take Brussels ; and trenches were opened 
against that city on the 24th. Brussels had only an old and 
weak wall, but the garrison held bravely out, and Marlbor- 
ough and Eugene, with sixty-five thousand men, joined hands 
at Marlborough's camp at Eouselaer, crossed the Lys, by 
clever dispositions misled the enemy, and forced the Scheldt 
near Oudenarde. The French line was broken, despite its 
careful construction, and the army cut in two, of which one 
part retired to Tournay and Grammont, and another to 
Ghent. Having thus broken the Scheldt lines, Eugene re- 
turned to the siege of Lille citadel, and Marlborough went 
to the relief of Brussels, from which the elector, on hear- 
ing of his approach, speedily decamped ; whereupon Marl- 
borough marched back to Oudenarde. 

The allies were not content to go into winter-quarters 
while Vendome lay in his Ghent-Bruges line. Ghent, which 
Vendome had left to La Motte while he operated in the 
Ostende region, was accordingly attacked and taken by a 
summary siege in December, capitulating January 2, and 
Bruges followed suit soon after. The French thereupon 
retired within their own border, Vendome going into winter- 
quarters between Ypres and Furnes. 

During this year the main struggle between France and 
the allies took place in the Netherlands, and the campaign 
here had been one exhibiting consummate ability in strategy, 
tactics and logistics. Elsewhere the operations were confined 
to manoeuvring, but they are more interesting as samples 
of the unenterprising system of the day than as military 
studies. At the end of the campaign both parties appear to 
have shown more signs of exhaustion than they had siuce 
the beginning of the war. 



LXIL 

MALPLAQUET. SEPTEMBER 11, 1709. 

Efforts at peace were fruitless, and Villars opened the 1709 campaign with 
over one hundred thousand men in intrenched lines near Bethune. The allies 
had one hundred and ten thousand men ; hut Villars' position being too strong 
fort attack, they laid siege to Tournay and took it in July. They then sat 
down to besiege Mons, from a position which rendered the French lines useless. 
Villars marched to its relief, took up a defensive position at Malplaquet, and 
the allies advanced on him. The armies were about equal, each short of one 
hundred thousand men, Villars being very stoutly intrenched. The bulk of 
the fighting, though not the most bloody, was in the forest of Taisnieres, on the 
right, in front of Eugene. The Dutch on the left assaulted with equal heart ; 
but the battle was not won until the French centre was disgarnished to save the 
left, and Marlborough made the final assault which ruptured the French line. 
Boufflers, who had taken wounded Villars' place, withdrew in good order, 
with a loss of fourteen thousand men ; the allies had lost twenty thousand. 
The result of the victory was naught. The allies turned to the siege of Mons, 
which they took September 26. With Malplaquet, Marlborough's brilliant mil- 
itary career ends. Together, lie and Eugene had won Blenheim, Oudenarde and 
Malplaquet; separate, he had won Kamillies and Eugene Turin. Honors in 
this war were equal. 

The effoi'ts to conclude peace during the winter of 1708- 
1709 were unavailing. The allies made their demands so 
harsh that Louis felt that he could not honorably accept 
them ; and his appeals to the French people were so effectual 
that, despite unusual distress throughout France, the power 
with which the new campaign was opened exceeded that of 
any other in which France had ever engaged. To Harcourt 
was intrusted the defense of the Rhine and Alsatia; to 
Berwick the task of holding head to the duke of Savoy, who 
threatened to debouch from the Alps ; but Flanders was 



THE RIVAL FORCES. 793 

again to be the main theatre of operations. The ban and 
arriere-ban were called out ; forces were drawn from the 
Rhine, and Villars, who had replaced Vendome, entered the 
field with one hundred and twelve thousand men, instinct 
with enthusiasm and courage. A preliminary position was 
taken up from Douay to the Lys, strongly fortified with all 
manner of works, marshes and inundations, and with detach- 
ments out at Lannoy, Touflers and Templeuve, in a strong 
but extended line, holding Bethune and covering Lens. The 
left was made the stronger flank because Villars believed that 
the allies, not to lose touch with the coast, would be apt to 
approach this way ; and the object of the whole line seemed 
to be to protect Arras and Douay, fortresses which were 
essential to the safety of France. The line was later pro- 
longed far to the east, and ran, more or less well held, by way 
of Marchiennes and Denain, Conde and Mons, and backward 
to Maubeuge. 

By great exertions, Marlborough managed to get sufficient 
supplies voted ; and ten thousand men were added to the 
English forces in Flanders. All told, the allies under 
Eugene and Marlborough opened the campaign with one 
hundred and ten thousand men, — a motley array of many 
nationalities, but held together by good discipline and success, 
and by ardent belief in their distinguished leaders. They 
were in a mood to attack the enemy ; but owing to the late 
season, it was June before their forces could assemble, and 
at the end of June they moved forward up the Lys, and on 
either side of the Deule, towards where Villars sat behind his 
inexpugnable defenses in the plain, and where he would have 
been only too glad to accept a battle. He at first imagined 
from their direction that the allies proposed to take Aire 
and St. Venant on his left, and then move into Picardy, or 
perhaps on Paris ; when they had, however, reached a point 



794 VILLARS' LINES TURNED. 

well south of Lille, he concluded that they were about to 
attack hiui, and prepared for the event by manning his 
lines. 

Eugene and Marlborough carefully reconnoitred Villars' 
position, which they found to be altogether too strong to 
attack. The right leaned on the Lille-Douay canal ; the cen- 
tre had the marsh of Cambrin as a shield ; and the left, 
which had received especial attention, was protected by 
streams and hills near Bethune. Intrenchments lay along 
the front; inundations alternated with regularly built lines; 
palisades and earthworks were erected everywhere, and the 
entire front had a ditch fifteen feet wide and six feet deep, 
with corresponding rampart. The army was encamped behind 
this defense, in two foot-lines, with cavalry cantonned in the 
rear. It was found essential by the allied generals to adopt 
some other means of opening the campaign than a foolhardy 
assault. By taking Tournay they might go far to turn 
Villars out of the strongest part of his intrenched line by the 
right, and after due deliberation they set themselves this 
task. 

But first it was wise to deceive Villars, and the allied com- 
manders made a demonstration in force towards his lines, as 
if seriously to attack them. On July 23 Eugene with the 
right crossed the Deule below Lille ; Marlborough with the 
left, consisting of the Anglo-Dutch, crossed the Marque ; and 
the whole force concentrated on the upper Deule. Villars 
believed that their attack was certain, withdrew all his detach- 
ments, strengthened himself with parts of the garrisons of 
Tournay and other fortresses, and lay waiting his opponents. 
On the night of June 27 the allies made a march in the direc- 
tion of the enemy in such fashion that he should observe 
it ; and then, by a sudden file to the left, behind a curtain of 
troops, marched straight on Tournay. So admirably was this 



CAPTURE OF TOURNAY. 795 

done that by seven next morning they had reached and com- 
pletely invested that fortress. 

When Villars perceived that the allies had sat down before 
Tournay, he did not deem it essential to interfere with the 
siege, but holding fast to his position, made two or three iso- 
lated attacks on the protecting force of Eugene at Mortagne 
and St. Amand, as if to feel him. He understood that his 
role was to protect the French frontier rather than to do 
battle with the enemy. 

Lying on the Scheldt, the town of Tournay was well forti- 
fied and full of military stores, but the garrison was not 
large, nor was victual abundant. The outworks had been 
drawn by Vauban, and the citadel was of the best. The col- 
leagues reversed the roles of Lille : Marlborough undertook 
the siege ; Eugene covered the operation by a position in a 
semicircle southwest of Tournay from St. Amand through 
Orchies to Pont a Tessin. Approaches were opened July 
6 ; but not until the 10th were the heavy guns got up by 
the river from Ghent. After repeated assaults and sorties 
repulsed, on the 21st a lodgment was effected in the covered 
way ; on the 27th a strong horn-work fell, and July 29 
the town surrendered, and the garrison, still four thousand 
strong, retired into the citadel. The latter offered excep- 
tional difficulty, and owing to lack of ability in the corps of 
engineers, a siege of mines and counter mines went on for 
weeks, with great loss of life. It was not until September 3 
that the citadel surrendered. 

Villars had done nothing to interrupt the siege, but to 
answer the demonstration on his right had been extending 
his lines from Douay along the Scarpe to Conde, and beyond 
the Scheldt. Finally, but too late to prevent the fall of 
Tournay, he made another demonstration on St. Amand. 
Eugene's position was too strong : it failed. 



796 A RAPID MARCH. 

The allies were still too much hampered with the network 
of fortresses in their front — Douay, Bouchain, Valenciennes, 
Conde — to think of advancing into France without further 
siege operations. They had tried August 18 to seize Mar- 
chiennes so as to threaten Douay, but the French had been 
too watchful. Deciding to complete the turning of the ene- 
my's position then compelled them to resort to the siege of 
Mons, which lay well beyond Villars' right. This fortress, 
with Valenciennes, Douay and some minor ones, which could 
be observed in case of an advance, alone remained to protect 
the French frontier at this point. But a passage of the 
Haine, the line of which was essential to secure the siege of 
Mons, must be had, and Orkney was dispatched August 31 
to St. Ghislain to get hold of the crossing. This likewise 
failed, but another expedition was sent out under the prince 
of Hesse-Cassel, who on September 3, with four thousand foot 
and sixty squadrons of horse, after a march of forty-nine 
miles in fifty-six hours, seized the passage at Obourg and 
Havre east of Mons. Marlborough at once ordered this gain 
to be followed up, occupied the heights of Jemappes west of 
the fortress, thus turned Villars' long lines, which he had 
been so laboriously constructing for months, and was ena- 
bled safely to invest Mons from the French side. The Tour- 
nay forces then passed the Scheldt, marched rapidly up the 
right bank of the Haine, crossed at Obourg and Havre, and 
made the investment of Mons secure. Villars did nothing 
more ; and about this time gallant Boufflers, though his 
senior, came to the army to serve under his orders, anxious 
solely to add his efforts to the success of the French arms. 

So soon as Villars perceived that the allies had laid siege 
to Mons, it was evident to him that his stronghold was of no 
further value. He had received from Versailles orders to 
prevent the siege of Mons even at the risk of a general 



VILLARS' LINES USELESS. 797 

engagement ; had drawn in a large body of troops at Valen- 
ciennes, had crossed the Scheldt there, and on September 4 
had reached the Honneau ; and September 8 he moved by 
his right still further towards the east, purposing to attack 
the allies under the walls of the fortress. In order to reach 
Mons, he chose to pass through the intervening forests by the 
gap of Aulnois,and on September 9 moved in this direction. 

Every one was surprised at the ease with which the lines 
that had cost such time and labor were rendered useless, — 
no person more so than Villars. He had expected an attack, 
but was ignorant as to where it might fall ; and the seizure 
by Hesse-Cassel of the crossing of the Haine first instructed 
him. The outposts of the allies had been thrown out to the 
Trouille ; and as Villars moved onward, his van of cavalry 
struck these outposts September 4. Fearing lest he had 
the entire allied army before him, he did not take measures 
to attack, though the moment was opportune. With a little 
more speed, indeed, Villars would have caught the allies sep- 
arated, but when he found the enemy's van in his immediate 
front, he arrested his advance. At this moment the allies, 
taking out the forces at Mons and Tournay, would scarcely 
have equaled Villars ; but he credited them with much over 
one hundred thousand men and one hundred guns, and declin- 
ing to attack he took up a defensive position. Tins was 
unlike Villars. 

When two armies are en face manoeuvring towards battle, 
the one who first attacks will in two cases out of three strike 
the enemy before he is quite ready, and had Villars known 
all the facts, he might have made a marked gain by assuming 
a sharp offensive. But he preferred to utilize his time in 
strengthening his position. Though usually the attacking 
party, at this time the French had adopted the fashion of 
defensive battles, — a thing less suited to the Gallic character 



798 TERRAIN OF MALPLAQUET. 

than the impetuosity of assault. They had been made cau- 
tious by the vigor of the allied generals. 

On September 7, having learned that Villars had sat down 
near Malplaquet and that he had fighting orders, the allies 
moved forward, leaving a small force to observe Mons. In 
a number of columns, headed by Eugene and Marlborough 
and so disposed as to cut off from the French the avenues of 
approach to Mons through the forest-gaps, the allies debouched 
into the plain of Quaregnon. Unless Villars retired, a battle 
must supervene. 

Villars had a good army, on which he had spent much 
time and effort, homogeneous, well-rested, in good spirits, and 
able in every sense. Among the officers serving under him 
no less than twelve became marshals of France. He had no 
idea of declining battle. He may have outnumbered the 
allies by five thousand men ; the forces are variously stated, 
both in organizations and numbers. Kausler gives them in 
one place as : Allies, one hundred and thirty-nine battalions, 
two hundred and fifty-two squadrons, one hundred and five 
guns ; total ninety-three thousand men. French and Bavari- 
ans, one hundred and thirty battalions, two hundred and sixty 
squadrons, eighty guns; total ninety-five thousand men. In 
another place he quotes the allies at ninety thousand men ; 
the French at eighty-one thousand. 

The theatre of the immediate operations is a square 
inclosed by Mons, Quievrain, Bavay, Givry, and bounded by 
the Haine on the north, and the Trouille and Honneau on the 
east and west. On the south were a number of brooks. 

The terrain of Malplaquet is a plateau some two hundred 
feet above the low grazing-land of the Trouille. At that day 
so many woods covered the ground that it could not be bet- 
tered for defense. The village of Malplaquet lies in open 
ground at the summit of this plateau, and from here the 



THE BATTLE DELAYED. 799 

brooks flow either towards the Trouille or towards the Hon. 
The brooks cut well into the surface of the country; in 
places, as at Aulnois and Blaregnies, running through deep 
ravines. The ridges between the brooks are marked. To 
the right of Malplaquet as one looks towards Mons stretches 
the great wood of Laniere; to the left, the forest of Tais- 
nieres, often called the wood of Blangies. In the many 
accounts of the battle, the woods are variously named, often 
breeding much confusion. Between and beyond these woods 
lies open ground, which, separated by another small wooded 
stretch, makes two avenues of approach, the left one being 
the "wolf -gap," the right one the gap of Aulnois. 

In the allied army there were two separate corps ; but each 
was instinct with the same spirit of generous rivalry which 
inspired the two commanders. Eugene was on the right of 
the allies with about two fifths of the joint forces ; Marlbor- 
ough was on the left with the larger half. 

From the windmill of Sart, on an eminence some three 
miles from Malplaquet, whither, with a big escort, they had 
ridden to reconnoitre, the allied commanders on September 9 
perceived the French army at. Malplaquet, where it had occu- 
pied the woods and the plain between. Marlborough at once 
ordered his wing, the left, forward, and took position athwart 
the gaps, penetrating so close to the French line as to bring- 
about a smart exchange. Both generals were for imme- 
diate attack ; Eugene the more so, for Marlborough was held 
back by the Dutch deputies, who insisted on waiting until 
a belated column of nineteen battalions and ten squadrons 
under Count Lottum could arrive from Tournay, and also 
until St. Ghislain was taken, so that the allies might have 
a secure crossing: over the Haine in their rear. All this was 
the more readily accomplished because Villars, on perceiving 
the enemy in force in his front, withdrew his outlying detach- 



800 VILLARS INTRENCHES. 

ments. On September 10 St. Ghislain was taken by escalade ; 
the Tournay troops came up ; and so soon as the French re- 
tired from the Haine, Eugene advanced his, the right, wing 
and took place in prolongation of Marlborough's line. 

What had been gained by the delay was more than twice 
offset by the time afforded Villars to intrench. His men 
had recently been trained to just this work, and they lost 
no time in making their position impregnable. The edge of 
the wood of Taisnieres became a fortress, and the artillery 
in front of the two gaps lay in such defenses that it could 
scarcely be taken, while, trained as it was, down a gentle 
slope towards the allied position, it admirably covered every- 
thing in its front. Abatis was laid before every intrench- 
ment ; redoubts arose as by magic, topped by palisades ; 
and the troops were protected by stockades placed wherever 
the ground allowed and with much skill. In the intrench- 
ments which lay across the gaps there were left intervals, 
through which the cavalry might debouch. To the works on 
the edge of the wood of Taisnieres the brooks acted as a ditch, 
and the left was protected by a swampy stream-head. Bat- 
teries which should give a cross-fire on the two approaches 
were set up ; a single one of twenty guns stood in the centre. 
The place was as desperate a spot to assault as the Bloody 
Augle. It was called, and in truth was, a " trouee d'enfer." 
Its one fault was being cramped. 

The ground was such as to make the French position a 
peculiar one. The approach to Malplaquet itself was admir- 
ably defended, and the edge of the Forest of Taisniei-es was 
held so as to throw the French left almost a mile beyond 
the centre, like a species of outwork. On the right, through 
the wood of Laniere, ran the Bavay-Binche turnpike ; and 
though the edge of the wood near Malplaquet was fortified, 
and the works leaned on the sources of the Honneau, which 



NO MANOEUVRING. 



801 



were rather low and swampy, it does not appear that the 
road was held in force, a fact which would have permitted 
the French right to be easily turned. But no advantage 




Battle of Malplaquet. 



was taken of this fact ; front attacks and hard fighting were 
the order of the day. Throughout the battle the assault 
was practically one in front, mainly by the right, with a feint 
which became a real attack on the French right, but in effect 
all along the line. 

Villars had generously given the post of honor, on the 



802 ANNIVERSARY OF ZENTA. 

right, to Marshal Boufflers, and himself took the left. 
D'Artagnan commanded the front line of the right ; Legal 
that of the left. Alberghatti had general charge of the left. 

On the 10th such part of the allied army as was in posi- 
tion indulged in a cannonade, duly replied to by the French. 
To aid in the attack finally appointed for the 11th, the force 
which Lottum had left under Withers, and which was coming 
up from Tournay, was instructed to cross at St. Ghislain and 
then to march through the wood of Blangies, so as near La 
Folie to fall on the French extreme left and make a diversion 
in favor of the main attack. The latter, by the battle orders, 
was to come from Eugene's corps : Baron Schulemberg was 
to force his way on the French left into the wood of Taisnieres 
with forty battalions of infantry, while on his left Count 
Lottum was to attack the same line of intrenchments with 
twenty-two battalions, which would crowd the enemy at an 
angle to Schulemberg's onset. Half an hour later, an assault 
by the prince of Orange with thirty-one battalions on the 
French right was to be made to occupy Villars' attention ; 
but Eugene's attack was to be the main one, intended to 
crush the salient left of the enemy. Schulemberg and Lottum 
were to draw up with a front such as the ground dictated. 
Lord Orkney, with fifteen battalions, was to advance towards 
the gap, but not beyond the point reached by Lottum, on a 
line with whom he was to keep. In other words, he was to 
remain in reserve until he could attack with success. It is 
said that these orders were later somewhat changed, but the 
course of the battle ran in accordance with them. The day 
was the anniversary of Eugene's great victory at Zenta. 

On the French side all was enthusiasm. If behind such 
works as these they could not defeat the allies, what had 
become of French valor? There could be no doubt as to 
the result. The enemy would here meet their match. 



THE ATTACK OPENED. 803 

St. Simon relates that by a clever ruse de guerre the allies, 
under a pretense of parley, got within the Taisnieres intrench- 
ments and were able to gauge their strength ; but the fact, if 
such, had small influence on the battle. 

At 3 A. m. religious services were held throughout the 
allied army. 

At half-past seven on the eventful day the morning fog 
cleared away, and the guns opened fire. After an interval, 
not exceeding an hour, the assaulting columns were started on 
their perilous errand. The orders to the Dutch, under the 
prince of Orange, were to wait thirty minutes before assault- 
ing in earnest, and the prince began with only an artillery 
duel ; but Schulemberg forged straight ahead with his forty 
battalions, while Lottum, with his twenty -two, swinging 
somewhat round to the right, advanced against the right of 
the French outworks on the edge of the forest of Taisnieres, 
thus working in towards the left of Schulemberg. Lord Ork- 
ney at the same time advanced his fifteen battalions to a 
point on a line with Lottum and out of range. The cavalry, 
owing to the awkward terrain, lay in groups in the rear, but 
had orders to press in after the foot as occasion warranted. 

The first assault of Schulemberg, who, in five lines, headed 
the advance of Eugene's wing, though stoutly delivered, was 
repulsed, after a struggle of some duration ; but headed by 
Eugene in person, who was ever reckless of his life, and aided 
by the smart diversion made by General Gauvain with a 
detached party of three regiments on the extreme French 
left, a second assault succeeded better, and in not much over 
an hour the enemy under Alberghatti were driven out of their 
intrenchments and well back into the wood. 

Marlborough meanwhile was sustaining Lottum with a 
number of squadrons. Some time later than Eugene had 
penetrated the works, Lottum carried those in his own front, 



804 THE GALLANT DUTCH. 

but after the lapse of a brief holding was expulsed by a 
charge led by Villars in person; whereupon Marlborough, 
at the head of his cavalry, rode in on the over-eager enemy 
and recaptured the works, aided by a renewed threat of 
Lottum. By this time Withers at La Folie began to make 
some headway, and as Eugene had actually captured the 
works in his front, it looked as if he would push Villars 
entirely from the wood of Taisnieres. 

On the left, meanwhile, where Field-Marshal Tilly was 
in nominal command, after his half hour's pause the prince 
of Orange delivered his assault with unequaled ardor. His 
troops were made up of auxiliaries in the Dutch service, 
including a Scotch brigade. On the first rush and without a 
stop the French intrenchments were carried, and had there 
been a reserve, the French right might have been then and 
there permanently broken. But the prince had but forty 
battalions ; Boufflers met him in the rear of his works with 
seventy, turned his guns inward and enfiladed his line, and 
after an obstinate and bloody struggle the Dutch were thrown 
out, but in no disorder. The French second line now closed 
up, and the prince of Orange could make no further head- 
way. He drew off with, it is said, three thousand killed and 
six thousand wounded, casualties which prove the bitterest 
kind of fighting. No sooner had they expelled the enemy 
than the French sallied out of their works and made a gal- 
lant advance with heavy columns of foot and horse. There 
was danger that the allied left would be broken, but Marl- 
borough opportunely came up from the wood of Taisnieres, 
and put in a few Hanoverian battalions to check the French, 
while Eugene brought some reserves over from the right. 
The matter was reestablished, and Boufflers withdrew within 
his works. 

Villars believed that, by giving up the advanced position 



DESPERATE FIGHTING. 805 

of his left, he would jeopardize his centre, and now resumed 
the offensive in the wood of Taisnieres ; and in order to do 
this with sufficient vigor, he reinforced his left with a number 
of battalions of foot withdrawn from his centre, — amone 5 
them the two Irish brigades. Eugene, aided by Withers' 
diversion, had pressed him so hard that his entire left wing- 
was in peril, and he now pushed his counter attack with the 
utmost vigor. Lottum called for help, and Marlborough flew 
to his aid. 

Villars had miscalculated the conditions of the battle ; 
his weakening of the centre proved his ruin; the allied 
commanders soon became aware of it, and were able to take 
a telling advantage of the lapse. Eugene, who had visited 
the left to aid the prince of Orange, rejoined his wing and 
forced the fighting on the right. It was already noon, and 
Eugene had pushed the French left well through the wood 
and had joined hands with Withers ; and Marlborough now 
sent the column under Orkney forward to make its way in at 
the disgarnished French centre, which so far had not been 
attacked in force. The fighting became hotter than ever. 
Eugene had had the bulk of the French foot to contend with ; 
though again wounded, he persisted in leading on his men 
in person, and he made marked progress, which Villars, like- 
wise wounded, was unable to resist. Withers, too, pressed 
on ; and the French left was practically broken. The weak- 
ened centre was now open to a stanch assault notwithstand- 
ing its intrenchments ; it gave way before Orkney's gallant 
onset and the works were entered. The cavalry followed 
hard upon the foot, and after getting through the lines, 
charged in with a will. The French guns were seized and 
turned on the enemy, who were now crowded into too small 
a space to be able to act effectively, and were fast losing 
ground. But Boufflers would not give up the fight. He 



806 



BOUFFLERS' FINE RETREAT. 



headed the Maison du Koi, and charging in on the allied 
horse, completely broke it up ; but he was himself in turn 
broken when he reached the line of Orkney's infantry, which 
now held the French ramparts, and decimated by point-blank 
musketry and by the cross-fire of some batteries judiciously if 
hastily placed, he retired. Once more he collected a column 
of foot as support to his squadrons and returned to the fray. 
Time and again was either line forced back, and not until 
Eugene came up with his reserve cavalry, and Marlborough 
with his English horse, could Boufners' noble effort be 
checked. On the allied left, simultaneously with the centre, 
Orange and Hesse-Cassel again advanced, took the works on 
the French right and held them. Ousted from his intrench- 
ments and with his left crushed beyond usefulness, Boufners 
saw that his chances were gone. The bloodiest battle of the 
war was over. 

But the gallant French marshal made a masterly retreat to 
Bavay, in what was, under the circumstances, astonishingly 
good order. No pursuit could be undertaken by the allies, 
exhausted by their fearful losses. Though the breaking of 
the centre threw the French wings off in eccentric directions, 
they reunited a dozen miles in the rear of Malplaquet. Bouf- 
ners carried off all but his dismounted guns ; there were losses 
of flags and guns on both sides. 

The wounded were returned by the allies a few days later. 
The French loss was not over fourteen thousand men. It has 
been given at eight thousand killed and four thousand five 
hundred wounded. In such a melee there was small chance 
for a wounded man. 

The allied loss was fully twenty thousand men. It is stated 
in the Memoirs of Count Schulemberg as follows : Eugene's 
loss, officers, eighty-nine killed, two hundred and sixty-eight 
wounded; men, two thousand and ninety-nine killed, three 



EXCEPTIONAL LOSSES. 807 

thousand four hundred and nine wounded ; Marlborough's 
loss, officers (including the Dutch), two hundred and seventy- 
four killed, seven hundred and twelve wounded ; men, three 
thousand eight hundred and twenty-one killed, nine thousand 
eight hundred and forty-eight wounded. Total, twenty thou- 
sand five hundred and twenty killed and wounded. The 
official account gives for the infantry alone five thousand five 
hundred and forty-four killed, and twelve thousand seven hun- 
dred and six wounded and missing; add the losses in the 
cavalry, and the same result is got. 

The credit of the victory was equally shared between the 
prince and the duke. It was Eugene's hearty work on 
the allied right which induced Villars to disgarnish his cen- 
tre, and thus enabled Marlborough with a gallant onset to 
break through where he would have vainly essayed before. 
What British there were in the battle behaved, as always, 
with true Anglo-Saxon grit. But the Dutch regiments 
lost the most heavily, showing determination quite equal to 
the British battalions. 

The battle had been one of prolonged and bloody fight- 
ing, in which mere endurance and the persistent courage of 
Eugene and Marlborough contrived to win. 

The French had fought superbly, and the allies had bought 
the victory dear. Some French accounts of the battle ascribe 
the defeat to the faulty position. It was rather the stubborn 
push of the two allied captains. Almost any generals would 
have retired before they had lost so heavily. 

In this battle the allies formed their troops for attack in 
columns of deployed battalions. The French centre, both 
horse and foot, used the same formation. The innovation had 
not been so generally employed before, though by no means 
new. 

It is curious to state that the result of this costly victory 



808 SPLENDID MARLBOROUGH. 

was naught. The allies merely besieged Mons without inter- 
ference. The trenches were opened September 25 ; on 
October 9 a lodgment was made in the covered way ; on 
October 17 the outworks were stormed ; and on the 26th the 
town surrendered. Brabant was entirely occupied. 

With Malplaquet, the brilliant part of Marlborough' & 
career came to an end. In this Succession War, he and 
Prince Eugene had won five splendid victories : three in joint 
command, Blenheim, Oudenarde and Malplaquet, though 
at Oudenarde Eugene was without his own troops, but present 
in person and commanding a part of Marlborough's ; and 
one singly each, Eugene at Turin, Marlborough at Ramillies. 
Though Eugene had fought and won a number of battles 
aside from these, as battle-commanders glory may be evenly 
awarded to each. In their separate victories Marlborough 
had been opposed by Villeroi at Ramillies, and Eugene by 
Marsin and the duke of Orleans at Turin. Neither singly 
had defeated a really able opponent. 

Marlborough is incontestably one of the most splendid mil- 
itary figures of this era of giants. From the battle of Liitzen 
to the battle of Mollwitz, only Turenne and Eugene stand 
out to share with him equal honors. He had the true battle 
fervor, and the coup d 'oeil which is allotted to so few gen- 
erals. He handled large armies with the same ease as he 
commanded small ones ; and no occurrence on the theatre 
of war or on the battle-field ever threw him off his balance. 
His strategic plans were often pared down to suit the puny 
taste of the Dutch deputies ; had he been left to his own 
devices, he might have undertaken larger operations, and we 
may believe would have conducted them with the same abil- 
ity which characterized his lesser ones. Opportunity was 
denied him. 

If Marlborough cannot claim to stand among the six great 



MARLBOROUGH'S STANDING. 809 

captains, he may certainly be placed on the first step of the 
military dais. But his eulogists do his solid reputation no 
good by such panegyrics as that of Alison, who, after claim- 
ing every other success in this war as the work of his hero, 
goes so far in his homage as to say that " by the succors " — 
some ten thousand men — " he sent to Eugene, he conquered 
Italy at Turin." 

Marlborough is a splendid enough leader of men, just as he 
stands, not to make it essential to rob others to clothe him. 
It is quite as natural that some of the foreign military critics 
should err in making Eugene the greater soldier of the two ; 
though it is rare that ample justice is not done Marlborough 
in the annals of the continental writers. He is one of the 
greatest men of the second rank ; but he may not even be 
said to be primus inter pares. 

The operations of the French this year were hampered by 
want of victual, in consequence of a poor harvest, and after 
Malplaquet, by the wounding of Villars. The operations of 
the allies after the battle were not remarkable. 




Bombard. (15th Century.) 



LXIII. 

SPAIN. 1704-1710. 

The operations of the War of the Spanish Succession were generally outside 
of Spain, hut in 1704 and 1705 the allies invaded Spain under the Archduke 
Charles, while the duke of Berwick commanded the army of Philip. In 1706 
Lord Galway, for Charles, took Madrid, but Berwick soon drove him hack to 
the coast. In 1707 Galway and Berwick met at Almanza, and the former 
was defeated ; and French reinforcements coming into Spain, the allies were 
crowded back to Catalonia. Their forces had been too much dispersed. In 
1708 and 1709 comparatively little was done ; but in 1710 Marshal Stahrem- 
berg beat Philip's army on the Ebro and marched to Madrid. Vendome now 
came into Spain, and he and Stahremberg conducted an admirable campaign, 
in which the French were fully successful, and the allies were again pushed 
back to the coast. 

Although the great war which had desolated Europe 
from 1701 to 1714 was caused by the question of who should 
succeed childless Charles II. ou the throne of Spain, yet that 
peninsula itself saw but a small portion of its horrors. Bar- 
ring' one or two campaigns, there was not much to interest 
the military student in comparison with the work of the 
giants in the Netherlands, in Germany and in Italy. 

There were no operations there until 1704. Towards the 
end of 1703 the claimant of Spain under the treaty of parti- 
tion, the Archduke Charles, with some nine thousand Anglo- 
Dutch troops, reached Lisbon. Adding to his force the 
Portuguese militia, he undertook in 1704 to defend the fron- 
tier of Portugal against the army of France and Spain under 
the duke of Berwick, a natural son of James II. In this he 
succeeded, but an attempt to advance to Madrid miscarried. 



MARCHING TO AND FRO. 



811 



During this same year Gibraltar fell to the fleet of England 
and Holland. In 1705 the archduke landed in Catalonia, 
where he gained a foothold, roused the Spaniards to insur- 
rection against Philip V., and aided by the gallant exploit 
of Lord Peterborough, captured Barcelona ; but this city was 
soon again laid under siege by the Franco-Spanish army. 




Spain. 

In 1706, after the arrival of a British fleet, the archduke 
drove the French with loss from the siege of Barcelona and 
made it his base, while the enemy retired to Madrid. Lord 
Galway, with the Anglo-Portuguese army, captured many 
strong places, and in June took Madrid and reduced all mid- 
dle Spain for Charles, who was proclaimed as king. But 
this success did not last long. The jealousies usual in Spain 
put an end to Galway's activity; and Berwick, aided by 



812 BATTLE OF ALMANZA. 

Philip's adherents in Andalusia and the Castiles, managed to 
regain Madrid and push the English general out of nearly 
all his conquests and towards Portugal ; while Charles 
returned to the eastern coast. Berwick had thus manoeuvred 
himself into a position between his opponents' two armies. 
Still, despite these losses, the archduke, at the opening of 
1707, held Catalonia, Arragon and Valencia, that is, the north- 
east corner of Spain, with a force of forty-five thousand men 
under Galway, who had also returned to the eastern coast. 
Berwick had nearly forty thousand men, and fourteen thou- 
sand more were on the way from France. In April, 1707, 
Galway concentrated some thirty-three thousand men in the 
province of Valencia ; he was active and enterprising, but he 
accomplished nothing of importance. He harbored the idea 
of moving on Madrid, but Berwick, with an equal number of 
men, moved on Almanza, a position from which he might 
threaten Galway's communications with Barcelona. Galway 
saw that he must do battle for his holding, certainly so if 
he would advance on the capital ; he likewise marched to 
Almanza, where he drew up in two lines, with squadrons in 
between his battalions of the first line. Berwick had also 
two lines, but his foot was in the centre, his horse on the 
flanks. Galway opened the attack; but his hermaphrodite 
first line did not work well, probably from inexperience in this 
formation. The cavalry attacked twice, but, after some work, 
was twice broken by the French horse, and found refuge 
under the fire of the foot. Finally Berwick strengthened his 
cavalry wings with foot from the second line, advanced for 
the third time, and succeeded in breaking Galway's left wing. 
In pushing back the French foot, Galway's centre had got 
itself forward in a salient from the main line, and somewhat 
separated from the right, which enabled Berwick to take the 
infantry in flank where the gap occurred, and by advancing 



GAL WAY FORCED BACK. 813 

his right smartly he secured the victory. None of the 
accounts of the battle is very clear; but the English, as 
always, fought stanchly, and their allies left them in the 
lurch. Galway was cut up, with a loss of five thousand killed 
and wounded and ten thousand prisoners ; he lost all his artil- 
lery and train, and retired through the province of Valencia 
towards Barcelona, with but sixteen thousand men. Berwick 
placed some garrisons in Valencia, and followed Galway with 
twenty-three thousand men, forcing him back across the Ebro 
through Tortosa to Lerida. Philip V. was now king in 
earnest. 

About the same time the duke of Orleans came by way of 
Navarre to Spain, and with nineteen thousand men advanced 
to Saragossa, where Berwick, crossing the Ebro, joined him. 
This made thirty-two thousand men, and they shortly drove 
the English out of Lerida and back into Catalonia, after 
which both armies went into winter-quarters. 

The error of the archduke had been to disperse his none 
too large force of forty-five thousand men in various garri- 
sons, so as to be unable to meet the enemy in sufficient 
strength. Had he kept his army in full force and taken his 
stand between Berwick and the duke of Orleans, — say in 
the Tudela country, — he might have beaten either in succes- 
sion. In like manner, had Berwick got the duke of Orleans 
to move down towards the lower Ebro, and he himself at once 
followed up Galway, between them they might have captured 
the entire body. 

Berwick was now ordered to the Netherlands ; and the 
duke of Orleans was unable to profit by the gains of 1707. 
Though he had some forty thousand men in Catalonia, and 
was faced by Stahremberg with not much over half the num- 
ber, he did nothing during 1708 and 1709 but besiege a few 
fortresses ; so that Stahremberg even threatened to penetrate 



814 SUCCESSES OF STAHREMBERG. 

into the interior. At the opening of 1710 Stahremberg's 
forces rose to twenty-six thousand men, and a Portuguese 
army of thirty thousand foot and two thousand horse assem- 
bled at the fortress Elvas ; while the forces of Philip V. were 
sensibly diminished by drafts for the defense of the French 
frontiers. He had not much exceeding thirty-five thousand 
men all told ; and after detaching a suitable force against the 
Portuguese to Estremadura, another to Andalusia, and mak- 
ing sundry smaller details, he had less than twenty thousand 
with which to operate in Catalonia. The early manoeuvres 
were more for the purpose of collecting victual and of devas- 
tating the land to prevent the enemy's so doing, than for any 
other apparent object ; but Stahremberg finally determined 
to march on Madrid, join the Portuguese, and definitely place 
the crown on Charles' head. 

Advancing in pursuance of his design, he won a handsome 
advantage on the Segre, and drove the Spaniards back to 
Lerida, in so much disorder that had he followed them up 
he might have destroyed them. But waiting for victual 
and material, he remained inactive for two weeks, when he 
advanced on Saragossa. This gave Philip time to repair his 
losses and to move up the right bank of the Ebro to oppose 
his passage ; but Stahremberg threw a pontoon bridge over 
the river, crossed, attacked the Spanish army, which num- 
bered but nineteen thousand men to his own twenty - four 
thousand, and beat it badly with loss of half its force. The 
wreck, nine thousand strong, retired to Tudela, and thence 
via Aranda and Valladolid to Salamanca, which had been 
made the rendezvous for a new Spanish army that Vendome 
had just come to organize. With the new army the French 
marshal hoped to march to Almaraz on the Tagus, and pre- 
vent the junction of the Portuguese and Stahremberg ; or at 
least give them battle. 



VENDOME DEFEATS HIM. 815 

The archduke should have devoted his energies to prevent- 
ing the formation of this new army ; but he was eager to do 
great things, and deserve as well as get the crown ; and 
Stahremberg could not restrain him. He chose to march on 
Madrid, which he took, as well as Toledo, and parceled out 
his forces uselessly. The Portuguese attempted to advance 
towards Madrid, but the appearance of a Spanish force of 
twelve thousand men in Estremadura headed them off, and 
they returned to Elvas. 

Vendome, on the other hand, went sensibly to work. He 
began by sending out small raiding parties of horse to cut 
the archduke's communications with Saragossa, and capture 
his convoys. This, indeed, he accomplished so frequently 
that provision grew scarce in Madrid. By this time Ven- 
dome's .army (Philip was formally in command) had grown 
to twenty -seven thousand men, and with these he made a 
clever march on the bridge of Almaraz over the Tagus, and 
pushed a large force of cavalry to Talavera. This, as Ven- 
dome had calculated it would be, was the end of any coop- 
eration of the half-hearted Portuguese, who summarily left ; 
Stahremberg could no longer hope to hold himself, and began 
his retreat to Catalonia with sixteen thousand men. He moved 
in three columns, each a day's march apart. Vendome fol- 
lowed him sharply, and at Brihuega, on the river Henares, 
cut off Stanhope and five thousand men who foi'med the rear- 
guard of his army, and who had kept no outposts to notify 
him of danger. Stahremberg quickly turned in his tracks, 
but was two days too late at Brihuega to rescue his lieuten- 
ant ; and Vendome, not permitting him to retire from the 
vicinity without fighting, attacked him at Villa Viciosa, near 
by. The battle here was drawn ; but Stahremberg hastened 
his retreat, with less than ten thousand men he now had left, 
to Saragossa and thence to Catalonia. He was really in grave 



816 



SKILLFUL MANCEUVRES. 



danger, for Marshal Noailles was advancing across the Pyre- 
nees on the east with twenty-seven thousand men, and might 
fall on his rear and completely destroy him. But Noailles 
contented himself with besieging Gerona in lieu of advancing 
to the Ebro. Vendome followed up Stahremberg, and, cross- 
ing the Segre, went into winter-quarters. 

These operations are interesting. Vendome's work was 
especially handsome. He had not only raised an army, but, 
by skillful manoeuvres, had separated the allies, had ousted 
Stahremberg from Madrid, and had driven his enemy back 
to the sea with a loss of two thirds his force. 




Heavy Cavalryman. 
(16th Century.) 



LXIV. 

VILLARS AGAINST MARLBOROUGH AND EUGENE. 
1710-1712. 

In 1710 the allies conducted a war of sieges. Douay was first invested, after 
breaking through the French fortified lines. Villars came to its relief, but did 
not push the allies to battle, preferring to protect Arras from attack. Having 
taken Douay, the allies in fact turned on Arras, but Villars headed them. off. 
They then invested Bethune, proposing to capture all the strong places up to 
the coast, with a view to a new base. Villars took up a position in the Hesdin 
line, and after Bethune fell, the allies moved on and captured St. Venant and 
Aire. But they were no nearer Paris. In 1711 Bouchain was captured. In 
1712 the English, with peace in sight, acted on the defensive ; Eugene captured 
Quesnoy, but failed before Landreeies, owing to a handsome attack by Villars 
on his communications. In 1713 Eugene defended the Pihine against Villars 
with twice his force. Peace supervened. 

In 1710 the allies raised their forces to one hundred and 
forty thousand men, of whom eighty thousand took the field. 
In April Eugene and Marlborough met at Tournay, where 
their several columns rendezvoused out of winter-quarters, 
and opened the campaign by the recapture of Mortagne, 
which had just been seized by the French, and was essential 
as a step to attacking Douay. The French still held the 
strong line created by Villars the year before ; and this had 
to be forced before Douay could be thought of. Speed being 
of the essence, the army advanced in two columns, the right 
under Marlborough, the left under Eugene. Marlborough 
crossed the Deule at Pont a Vendin, unopposed ; Eugene, 
finding that he would have to fight for his passage at Pont 
d'Auby, filed to the right and crossed at Couriere. The two 
columns reunited at Lens on April 21, and the French under 



818 



INVESTMENT OF DOUAY. 



Montesquieu retired so hurriedly behind the Scarpe at Yitry 
as to forfeit much of their baggage. Marlborough crossed 
the Scarpe and closed in on Douay on the right bank, while 
Eugene remained on the left bank and invested it from the 
north. The French then retired to Cambray. 

Douay had been captured by the French in 1667. It was 
a large and powerful fortress, the work of Vauban, astride 
the Scarpe, whose inundations made approach to it difficult. 




Douay Region. 



It was not of the newest construction, but still a strong place 
of the first class, and the ditch was wide and full, and the 
covered way excellent. It had eight thousand men in garri- 
son, under Alberghatti. The trenches were opened May 4-5. 
On the 9th a big siege-train arrived from Tournay ; on the 
11th the batteries were pushed up to the covered way. The 
danger to the fortress caused Villars to be sent to its relief 
with ninety thousand men. Berwick was with the army under 
special orders to report to the king. Assembling at Cam- 
bray, Yillars, under protection of a feint on the allies by way 
of Bouchain, moved by his left via Arras across the Scarpe 
and into the Lens plain, facing towards Douay, with reserves 



DOUAY SURRENDERS. 819 

at Mt. St. Eloy, intending battle. In anticipation of what 
might occur, the allies had fortified two lines, one facing east 
and one west, for the protection of Douay ; and so soon as 
Villars' manoeuvres became clear, Marlborough and Eugene 
depleted their Douay lines, advanced to meet him with sixty 
thousand men, and on May 30 took up the position on the 
west of Douay, which extended from Vitry north to Mon- 
tigny, backing on the fortress. A strong outpost at Pont a 
Vendin protected the right. Here they drew up for battle, 
which seemed inevitable, as Villars never lacked pugnacity. 
On June 1 he advanced to the front of the position of the 
allies, whose role was, as covering the siege of Douay, neces- 
sarily a defensive one. On reconnoitring, both Berwick and 
Villars deemed the line too strong to be forced. The French 
retired June 4, hoping that the allied generals would follow ; 
and finally took up a position backing on Arras ; and the 
siege went on, in the presence of a relieving army of five- 
score thousand men ! By mid-June the fortress was in extre- 
mis, and Villars made another feint as if to relieve it by the 
right bank of the Scarpe. Marlborough barred his advance 
and Villars again retired, and in order to prevent the allies, 
after capturing Douay, from further penetrating into France, 
took up a position with his right on Cambray and his left out 
towards Arras. On June 19 the prince of Orange failed 
in an assault, but on the 24th made a lodgment. The sap 
had reached the counterscarp, and on the 26th Alberghatti 
surrendered. He had lost three thousand five hundred men ; 
the allies eight thousand. 

Early in July, after a short rest, Eugene and Marlborough 
advanced on Arras, the last of the triple line of French for- 
tresses at that point. But Villai*s had ably placed himself to 
prevent their advance. His left was on the Crinchon : his 
centre from Marquion to Mouchy le Preux ; his right between 



820 . BETHUNE FALLS. 

Valenciennes and Bouchain. He had nearly one hundred 
thousand men and one hundred and thirty guns ; and so soon 
as he saw that the allies were aiming for Arras, he moved by 
his left so as to prevent them from reaching the place to 
invest it. They then decided to lay siege to Bethune, a for- 
tress whose capture would lead probably to the fall of Aire 
and St. Venant, and thus open up communication with the 
coast ; and they invested the place July 15. Villars became 
nervous for the safety of Montreuil, Hesdin and Dourlens, 
towns in Picardy, the second of which places the allies indeed 
desired to seize ; and again moved by his left to a position 
with his right on Arras and with his left stretching out 
towards St. Pol ; and here he threw up a new line of defense. 
He did not care to risk a battle, which, if lost, might now be 
fatal for France. For the same reason it has been suggested 
that the allies might have sought battle to marked advantage ; 
but they did not. Perhaps the losses of Malplaquet were 
deterrent. Bethune, though well garrisoned and well pro- 
visioned, fell at the end of August. The details need not be 
given. 

As Villars lay so strongly posted that the allies did not 
wish to attack him in his lines, they now resorted to the siege 
of St. Venant and Aire. These towns lay on the Lys, which 
river their possession would open, and they might form the 
base for a movement on Calais and Boulogne, which had 
been in contemplation. On September 2 the allies moved 
forward as if to reconnoitre Villars' lines ; and then suddenly 
filing to the right, marched on St. Venant and Aire along 
such a route as to prevent Villars from interfering with the 
operations. Both places were quickly invested. St. Venant 
was very strong and had eight thousand garrison, but despite 
the loss of an important convoy coming to the allies from 
Ghent, which Villars cleverly captured or destroyed, it fell 



MARLBOROUGH IN DISFAVOR. 821 

the end of September. Aire held out till November 12. 
The capture of these towns, however, brought the allies no 
nearer Paris ; and before Douay, Bethune, Aire and St. 
Venant, the allies had lost twelve thousand killed, thir- 
teen thousand wounded, and seven thousand prisoners or 
missing, — a loss which could ill be afforded. They had cap- 
tured four of the strong places of the French, with nearly 
thirty thousand men ; but they had made no essential progress 
in this campaign. Louis' intrigues were bringing peace 
nearer, and the military success had not been brilliant. It 
was one of the old-model campaigns, the knot of which a vic- 
tory would have cut. But political matters had been going 
against Marlborough at home ; his hands were even more 
tied than usual ; Eugene suffered from the same cause ; and 
the campaign lacked vigor accordingly. 

The campaign of 1711 in the Netherlands was conducted 
under difficulties. The change of ministry in England had 
brought Marlborough into disfavor, aud we have Eugene's 
testimony to show that this reacted upon his military ardor. 
The new ministry was set for peace, but allowed war to go 
on. Eugene was ordered to the Rhine to protect the election 
of a new emperor in Frankfort, and took twenty-three thou- 
sand men from the army. 

France now had but her third line of fortresses left, of 
which Arras and Cambray were of the first order. Villars 
had created another long line of defense, extending from the 
Canche all the way to Namur, along the Scarpe, Sensee, 
Scheldt and Sambre. Marlborough had cut out for the year's 
work the capture of Bouchain, Arras and Le Quesnoy, hoping 
to winter near the French frontier and invade France in 
1712. Bouchain was his first objective, to reach which he 
must break through Villars' lines. These were too strong to 
assault, and Marlborough tried ruse. Moving by his right 



822 THE ENGLISH ON THE DEFENSIVE. 

from the position to which he had advanced south of the 
Scarpe, he crossed at Vitry and marched towards Bethune. 
Villars moved by his left on a parallel route to a position 
west of Arras. Here Marlborough made a feint to attack 
him, and having convinced him that he was about to do so, 
under cover of a cavalry demonstration on Villars' left he 
marched rapidly back, crossed the Scarpe at Vitry, and easily 
breaking through the French lines, passed the Scheldt at 
Etrum and invested Bouchain. Part of his column had 
marched thirty-six miles in sixteen hours. Villars sought to 
entice him into battle near Cambray, but to no purpose, 
though it has been thought that Marlborough would have 
done well to fight. Invested August 17, Bouchain fell Sep- 
tember 11. Beyond this nothing was done in 1711. In the 
way of manoeuvring, part of the campaign had been brilliant ; 
but it was not otherwise so ; nor had its activity been com- 
parable to some of Eugene's. 

In 1712 peace-negotiations were begun at Utrecht, and the 
English army received orders to act on the defensive ; Prince 
Eugene, who succeeded Marlborough as commander-in-chief 
of the Dutch forces, being meanwhile under orders to continue 
the offensive, the two allies for the first time could not act 
in unison. They had possession of Antwerp, Oudenarde, 
Tournay, Ath, Mons, Dendermonde, Menin, Lille, Bethune, 
Aire, St. Venant, Douay and Bouchain. They could well 
have pushed into Artois and Picai'dy, and have taken Bou- 
logne and Calais, as proposed two years before. But 
Eugene was seriously hampered by his dealings with the 
Dutch as well as those with the English allies, and was 
unable to carry out his own ideas. It would have been much 
more in his style, and indeed he frequently urged the Dutch 
deputies, to seek to try conclusions with Villars in a great 
battle rather than to sit down to a series of sieges, especially 



BAD FAITH OF BRITISH MINISTRY. 823 

as a battle lost would now all but destroy France. The plan 
of 1710 was abandoned, and Eugene chose as a starting-point 
for his march into France the other flank, because the coun- 
try was more fruitful and easier, and because Quesnoy and 
Landrecies were far less serious obstacles than Arras and 
Cambray. 

Eugene assembled the troops early in April in the Douay- 
Marchiennes country. Lord Ormond was in command of the 
English contingent. The total force was some one hundred 
and twenty thousand men and one hundred and thirty-six 
guns. Villars had perhaps twenty thousand less, and lay 
from the headwaters of the Scheldt at Le Catelet along the 
left bank of the river to Cambray, and thence stretching out 
towards Arras. These two strong places he was bound to 
preserve from investment if possible. But his position left 
Conde, Valenciennes, Quesnoy and Landrecies outside his 
scheme of defense. 

Towards the end of May Eugene crossed the Scheldt 
above Bouchain. Ormond advanced with him ; but he had 
secret orders, the fruit of the recent negotiations, to take part 
in neither a battle nor a siege, and of this fact knowledge had 
been afforded Villars, — bad faith little creditable to the 
British ministry. The French were in poor military case ; 
but this treachery saved them harmless. 

Prince Eugene opened the siege of Quesnoy June 8, and 
undertaking, as a further menace, to devastate the French 
borders, so as to intimidate the population and to keep his 
army at their cost, he sent twelve hundred horse into Cham- 
pagne and Lorraine, while from the Rhine, at the same time, 
another raiding party was sent into the Metz region. 

Eugene had for some time suspected the bad faith of the 
English, but was scarcely prepared for so bald a breach of 
common military honor as was contained in the secret instruc- 



824 



THE ROAD TO PARIS. 



tions td Ormond. Had he not been wise, he might have got 
into a situation where Villars could have destroyed him. 
About midsummer the matter came to a head, and the Eng- 
lish left the army ; the other allies kept faith ; and having, 
July 4, captured Quesnoy, Eugene moved forward to the 
siege of Landrecies. He marched over the Escaillon to the 
Selle, and sent the prince of Dessau ahead with thirty battal- 
ions and forty squadrons to shut in Landrecies. His main 




Quesnoy-Landrecies Region 



force to cover the siege was placed between the Sambre and 
the Scheldt, and his chief magazines were in Marchiennes, 
behind the Scheldt and the Scarpe. To hold communications 
with these places, there had, at Denain and at Prouvy over 
the Scheldt, been built bridges and on the right bank bridge- 
heads ; and between Denain and Marchiennes a double line 
of works running nearly the entire distance of ten miles, 
behind which the trains could safely move. These were part 
of Villars' old lines, and the men called them " The Road to 
Paris." Denain had works all around it, and a garrison of 



A BAD POSITION. 825 

thirteen thousand men under Albemarle ; Marchiennes had 
four thousand. Prince Eugene's communications with his 
magazines were thus apparently protected ; but they were not 
actually so. The position was strategically faulty, in that the 
depot of all supplies lay beyond the right flank in prolon- 
gation of the front of the position. It was quite against 
Eugene's advice that he was thus posted ; Marchiennes had 
been selected by the Dutch because of its water approaches 
by the Lys and Scheldt. After the capture of Quesnoy, 
Eugene would have been glad to move the depots thither, 
but the Dutch looked at the matter from the economic stand- 
point solely, and not from the military ; they declined the 
expense of moving the depots, alleging that Douay and Bou- 
chain sufficiently protected the line, which ran behind the 
Selle. 

Villars received orders from Versailles to compel Prince 
Eugene to raise the siege of Landrecies. He had long been 
ready to so act on his own judgment; for Prince Eugene 
was now much weaker than when he had the English con- 
tingent with him ; actually weaker than Villars. Moreover, 
the French army was concentrated and in good order, while 
Eugene's was in several detachments and much spread. 
Villars had reconnoitred the Landrecies position and Eu- 
gene's position behind the Selle, and found both too strong 
to assault. But he saw that he could easily make an attack 
on Denain or Marchiennes, and this he began to consider. 
Although the niceties of strategic manoeuvring had not yet 
been studied as they were after Jomini began his work of 
showing why Napoleon did what he did, yet a problem so 
simple as this of necessity forced itself on a man of such 
military intelligence as Villars, and he soon formed his 
plan. 

In order to be sure of success, Villars must first draw 



826 VILLARS TURNS EUGENE'S FLANK. 

Eugene's attention away from his right flank. He crossed 
the Scheldt, began to prepare military roads towards the 
Sambre, advanced towards the headwaters of the Selle, and 
July 22 camped at Cambresis and south of it. This opera- 
tion convinced Eugene that his siege of Landrecies was 
threatened. Villars further made a number of demonstrations 
against the allied left on the circumvallation lines at Landre- 
cies, and instituted such preparations as looked like a serious 
attack in that quarter ; he sent a cavalry party to Cartigny 
to make a lively demonstration; he issued orders for a march" 
against Landrecies, of which Eugene got notice by his spies. 
In the belief that the manoeuvre was a real one, Eugene con- 
centrated a large part of his infantry force on his left, and 
gave undivided attention to the siege works. Villars left a 
small force to engage him, detailed strong cavalry parties to 
observe Bouchain and hold the fords of the Selle, so as to 
prevent Albemarle from discovering his march ; filled the 
country full of his hussars ; and on the evening of July 23, 
sending his pontoons suitably guarded to Neuville, three 
miles from Bouchain, he marched unnoticed with the main 
force in close columns in their rear. A demonstration was 
made at the same time on the Landrecies lines to arrest the 
attention of Prince Eugene. Villars crossed the Scheldt at 
Neuville early July 24. Albemarle must have been singularly 
careless in his outpost service, for up to 7 A. M., when he dis- 
covered the marching French column at Avesne le Sec, he 
had no information of their movements. Even Bouchain had 
sent him no word of the passage at Neuville, or else the mes- 
sengers had been picked up. 

Going ahead, the French cavalry had at once fallen on and 
taken the southerly line of the Road to Paris ; while the 
commandant of Valenciennes headed part of the garrison to 
take the northerly line. When Villars came up with his 



A BAYONET CHARGE. 827 

infantry, he found the lines in his possession and Denain open 
to assault. Upon this town he at once directed his march. 

So soon as notified, Eugene had speedily reached the 
ground, had ordered Albemarle to hold the post at all haz- 
ards, and he would within a few hours sustain him with a 
heavy force ; and had galloped back towards Landrecies to 
collect troops. But he counted too much on Albemarle, or on 
any delay on the part of Villars. So soon as he reached the 
ground, Villars drew up his Column of attack. According to 
some authorities, he organized eight columns two hundred 
paces apart ; according to others, he drew up in one column 
of forty deployed battalions — the Denain column — and 
firing not a shot, but standing three volleys from the allies, 
he charged in with the bayonet and swept over the intrench- 
ments like a flood. The resistance was as naught. The 
allied force was overthrown and largely driven into the river, 
with a loss of eight thousand men. The French lost a bare 
five hundred. 

For the second time in modern warfare, an attack solely 
with cold steel had been successful, — the first time at the 
battle of Speyerbach in 1703. Villars deserves great credit 
for his speedy and bold attack ; he knew he had not a minute 
to lose, and as a fact Eugene came up too late : Albemarle 
had been overmatched ; the damage was already done. Hav- 
ing taken Denain, and the bridge and redoubt at Prouvy, 
Villars turned back and captured Marchiennes on the 
30th, with all its garrison, material, food and two hundred 
pieces of ordnance. Eugene was compelled to raise the siege 
of Landrecies, and retired by Mons on Tournay. Villars 
incorporated in his army the garrisons of Ypres, Dunkirk 
and other sea fortresses, which, now that the English were 
out of the game, were of no more use ; and was by twenty 
thousand men stronger than Eugene ; and having the advan- 



828 EUGENE ON THE DEFENSIVE. 

tage of moral gain of victory, he ended the campaign by 
besieging and recapturing Douay, Quesnoy and Bouchain. 

Villars earned unstinted praise for this handsome piece of 
work, which cost little in men, made great gains, and quite 
upset the calculations of the enemy. It was at a moment, 
too, when Louis XIV. was hard pushed, and it had a marked 
influence on the negotiations for peace. 

The emperor would none of the Peace of Utrecht, which 
England and Holland had made with France. Prince Eu- 
gene, in 1713, was ordered to operate along the Rhine from 
Switzerland to the boundary of Holland, the Ettlingen lines 
to be the central point of his scheme. Villars lay on the 
other side with one hundred and thirty thousand men, and 
after some manoeuvring began the siege of Landau. Prince 
Eugene had sixty thousand men at Ettlingen, and might, 
perhaps, have crossed the Rhine to hamper the operation. 
But he lacked numbers ; Villars anticipated him, put over a 
division near Fort Louis June 4, sent some horse to Rastadt, 
and concentrated his force on the right bank opposite as a 
demonstration ; while he himself returned to the left bank, 
captured Speyer, blockaded the Philipsburg bridge-head, 
where he made a fortified camp, and took that at Mannheim, 
cut Landau off from all communications with the Rhine, sent 
eighty squadrons to Worms, captured Kaiserslautern, and 
thus, by every means, forestalled a crossing by Eugene. Two 
months later (August 20) Landau surrendered. Villars' 
army still increased, while Prince Eugene received no rein- 
forcements, and was forced to keep to a quiet defensive. He 
feared a crossing at Freiburg, and sent General Vobonne 
thither with eighteen thousand men to reoccupy the old for- 
tified lines. Villars dispatched forty battalions to Freiburg 
and drove Vobonne out of his defenses ; the latter left twelve 
battalions in Freiburg and retired to Rothweil. 



EUGENE WINS TWO VICTORIES. 829 

Villars began the siege of Freiburg, which lasted many- 
weeks, but finally, on November 13, the town fell, and the 
garrison received free exit. Both parties now went into 
winter-quarters, and Eugene and Villars began to negotiate. 
The result was that the Peace of Rastadt was concluded in 
the spring. 

Prince Eugene in this campaign had but half of Villars' 
troops, and was unable to effectuate anything. He remained 
in the Ettlingen lines, strictly on the defensive, but was con- 
stantly watchful and active in small war. He did well to 
confine Villars to the capture of Landau and Freiburg, and 
to prevent his penetrating beyond the Rhine country, as with 
his huge army he well might do. 

A new war breaking out with Turkey in 1716, Prince 
Eugene was put in chief command of one hundred and 
twenty-five thousand men in Hungary, and a flotilla on the 
Danube. After some preliminary mancBuvring with sixty 
thousand men, near Peterwardein, Eugene attacked the 
Turks, who had nearly one hundred and fifty thousand. On 
August 5, after a hotly contested battle, in which Eugene's 
left was successful, his right defeated, but saved by cavalry 
charges on the Turkish flank, the imperial army won a very 
splendid victory. The Turks fled to Belgrade with six thou- 
sand killed, the loss of one hundred and sixty-four guns, one 
hundred and fifty flags and other trophies. Prince Eugene 
lost three thousand killed and two thousand wounded. 

Next year Eugene captured Belgrade after a handsome 
campaign, in which he attacked and defeated under its walls 
a force sixfold his own, and received his thirteenth and last 
wound on the field of battle. 

Much of the brilliant work of Eugene was against the Turks, 
a subject of marked interest, but beyond the scope of our 
subject. From 1718 to 1737 he was not in active service. 



830 



FREDERICK AND EUGENE. 



The last two campaigns of Prince Eugene in the war of 
the Polish Succession were conducted against very superior 
numbers, but v were weak. The brave and able soldier was 
feeling the weight of his seventy-one years. He had done 
enough to send his name down to posterity as one of the 
brightest in the annals of generalship. 

In this war, young Frederick, Crown Prince of Prussia, 
was for a few weeks present at the headquarters of the splen- 
did old warrior, an occurrence which pleasantly links the era 
which Marlborough and Eugene so highly distinguished with 
the magnificent era of the Last of the Kings. 




Roofed Gun. (15th Century.) 



LXV. 

CHAELES XII. 1700-1709. 

During the War of the Spanish Succession two remarkable men were in 
conflict in northeastern Europe : Peter the Great, who made Russia, and Charles 
XII., who undid Sweden. Charles inherited much of the Vasa ability, but 
lacked its common sense. On his accession Sweden was threatened by Den- 
mark, Poland and Russia. Charles was a mere lad, but he showed wonderful 
ability. He attacked and brought Denmark to terms, and then, turning on 
Russia, defeated Peter at Narva in a most brilliant engagement. Hence he 
turned against Poland, fought his way across the Dwina, and beat the Poles at 
Klissow. In the course of a couple of years, despite the aid of Saxony, Charles 
completely reduced Poland, and in 1706 invaded Saxony, dictated terms to both 
countries, and threatened to take a hand in the Succession War. But forego- 
ing this, he turned again on Russia. Peter had well used his respite in creating 
an army ; Charles ventured too far into the bleak plains of Russia, was sadly 
used by the winter of 1708, and in 1709 was wholly defeated at Pultowa, and 
became a refugee among the Turks. He later returned to Sweden ; but his 
country, meanwhile, had been despoiled of her glory. Charles XII. would 
have been a great soldier had he possessed a balance-wheel ; as it is, he was a 
mediocre one. 

While central Europe was being convulsed with the gi- 
gantic contest of the Spanish Succession, a war in the north 
went on which has some interest for us, though fruitful rather 
in negative than in positive lessons. Two remarkable men 
enacted the chief roles, — Peter the Great, who began the 
work which has made Russia what she is to-day, and Charles 
XII. , who undid all that his great predecessor, Gustavus 
Adolphus, had won for Sweden. Both these men were 
strong and able ; but Peter's practical intelligence lacked 
brilliancy, while Charles' brilliant intellect ran off into the 



832 



PETER AND CHARLES. 



unbalanced trait which ever and anon cropped up in the Yasa 
family. Peter was a magnificent passionate animal, who civ- 
ilized his subjects with the knout, but who in government and 
politics had a thorough, patient, reasonable habit of mind, 
which viewed things as they actually were and marshaled 
them in methodical array. Charles was strict in his morality, 




Campaigns of Charles XII. 

had none of the passions of his great opponent, and possessed 
all the virtues of private life ; he was a king who indulged 
in neither wine, women nor song; but in political matters 
he was headstrong, foolish and senseless. He had much of 
the Vasa intellect ; he had much of the equipment which 
made Gustavus so great ; but he quite lacked that astonish- 
ing mental poise which kept Gustavus from falling into a 
network of errors. 



A BRILLIANT YOUNG KING. 833 

Peter had found the Baltic a Swedish lake, and he deter- 
mined to make it an open sea, and to own harbors in it of 
some value to Russia, — a thing which must of necessity lead 
to war. Another breeder of trouble for the Swedes was the 
attempt of Augustus, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, 
to reconquer Livonia, which Gustavus had taken from Sigis- 
mund. Still another was that Frederick of Denmark had a 
quarrel with the duke of Holstein-Gottorp, the brother-in-law 
of Charles XII. ; and the latter, a mere boy of fifteen when, 
in 1697, he ascended the throne, embraced the duke's cause. 
These three monarchs, Peter, Augustus and Frederick, who 
deemed Sweden an easy prey, concluded a union against her. 
The Danes invaded Schleswig ; the Saxons laid siege to Riga, 
and the Russians invested Narva. The eighteen-year-old king 
had as much on his hands at the opening of his reign as 
Gustavus Adolphus. 

Instinct with the true Vasa courage, Charles rose superbly 
to the occasion. Not waiting for Denmark to attack him, 
he sent eight thousand men to Pomerania, and started from 
Stockholm in May, 1700. The English and Dutch fleets 
were on his side, — that of free commerce and an open Sound, 
which Denmark threatened to close. On forty-three ships he 
embarked his Swedes, crossed over to Zealand, and, threat- 
ening Copenhagen, compelled an immediate contribution of 
money and victual. Not anticipating so speedy an attack, 
Frederick was at a distance ; but though he hurried to the 
spot, he found himself summarily driven into the peace of 
Travendal, in August, by which he indemnified Holstein and 
agreed to future neutrality towards Sweden. This was a 
handsome gain. Charles had bettered on Gustavus' Danish 
war. But he was aided by what his great predecessor had 
not, a now powerful country and a splendid army. Though 
Denmark was shelved, the two other enemies were yet 



834 



PETER'S POOR ARMY. 



threatening. Peter had assembled one hundred thousand 
men to invade Livonia, and Riga was being stoutly pressed 
by the Poles, and ably defended by the veteran Alberg. In 
the event, Riga being a free town of great commercial value, 
the Poles retired from it, lest they should embroil themselves 
with England and Holland. 

Passing through and ravaging Ingria, Peter, with eighty 

thousand men, appeared 
before Narva in Octo- 
ber, 1700. They were 
not soldiers in the sense 
of the Swedes, who still 
retained what Gustavus 
had willed them, and 
though Peter was grad- 
ually seeking to teach 
them discipline, they 
were an ill-fed, ill-armed 
and half-organized rab- 
ble, of whom the larger 
part had only arrows 
and clubs, and in lieu of 
soldierly instinct had 
but the dogged, persist- 
ent obedience for which 
the Russian has always been famous. And although Peter 
had purchased a great number of guns, there was scarcely any 
knowledge of artillery practice in his army. Not arrogating 
to himself the divine right, Peter's forces were commanded 
by a German, and the leaven of the troops was German. 
Nothing shows the low condition of the Russian army more 
than that their poor knowledge of sieges had enabled them 
in ten weeks to make scarcely any progress. Charles 




Narva. 



A GALLANT ASSAULT. 835 

crossed the Baltic in two hundred vessels, and landing 
at Pernau, in the gulf of Riga, advanced with twenty thou- 
sand men, of which four thousand were horse, to the relief 
of Narva. Hurrying forward to Revel, he started from here 
with the horse and four thousand foot, and leaving 1 his bag- 
gage at Wesenburg, half way to Narva, marched through a 
country which the enemy had ruthlessly devastated, struck 
the Russian outposts in a defile which a handful could have 
defended, and drove them in. No resistance was made worthy 
the name, and in order to utilize the moral effect of his first 
gain, without waitiug for the rest of the army, Charles pushed 
on, and November 29 stood in front of Narva. 

Lying on the west of the river of the same name, Narva 
was fairly strong. On the east bank was a small town, also 
fortified. The Russians had mounted many batteries, had 
made approaches to both places, and had built a line of cir- 
cumvallation from the river above to the river below, nearly 
three miles long. It was of earthworks, with a deep ditch, 
some outworks well flanked, and covered by abatis and trous 
de lowp. Peter had gone towards Moscow to bring up an 
army of reinforcements ; and General Croy (Kreuz) was in 
command. 

Tired as the troops were, indefatigable Charles set them at 
making gabions and fascines while he reconnoitred the lines. 
Though he had but one man in ten of the Russians (five 
thousand foot and three thousand horse), he would not wait 
for the bulk of his army to come up, but ordered an assault. 
Pie knew his troops, — ever since the day of Gustavus the 
Swedes had outranked every army in Europe, — and took 
counsel of his own superabundant gallantry. Charles had 
the elan of the true cavalry leader ; but he lacked the reserve 
of the great captain. He possessed Gustavus' fiery boldness, 
perhaps the great Swede's worst trait as king and army 



836 A SPLENDID VICTORY. 

leader; and lacked his methodical caution, unquestionably 
his greatest virtue. 

Two columns were organized, the right under Welling, the 
left under Rhenskjbld, and such batteries as had come on 
with the king were planted so as to aid the assault. The cav- 
alry was held in reserve, with orders to ride in so soon as the 
foot should have made a passage for them, and to drive home 
with the cold steel. At 2 P. M. of November 30, on the sig- 
nal given, two " fusees," the columns rushed forward with the 
watchword " With God's help ! " Luckily a storm of sleet 
was blowing in the faces of the enemy ; and so hot was the 
assault that in a quarter-hour the lines were taken and a 
breach practicable for cavalry was made. Believing in them- 
selves, believing in their king, the Swedes, in spite of num- 
bers, broke through the Muscovite array, and cut the enemy 
down by thousands. It was like the old battles of Alexan- 
der against the Oriental hordes. The enemy turned and fled, 
part towards the river on the north, where their mass broke 
down the bridge, part to some barracks on the bank, where 
they offered a desperate resistance. The Russian generals of 
the right wing were all captured ; and by nightfall that part 
of the line was secured. The Russian left was still unbroken, 
and promised another battle on the morrow, for which 
Charles duly prepared ; but during the night, in imitation of 
the left, they concluded to surrender also. 

The Swedes, out of eight thousand men, lost six hundred 
killed and one thousand four hundred wounded. Of the 
Russians over eighteen thousand are said to have been cut 
down. Innumerable trophies were taken, and one hundred 
and forty-five new bronze guns. The victory was complete, 
the triumph of a disciplined handful against an unorganized 
multitude. But it would not always be thus. To Peter, who 
came up too late with his forty thousand reinforcements, the 



PASSAGE OF THE DWINA. 



837 



battle of Narva was a lesson by which he failed not to profit, 
to arm and discipline his forces while he was civilizing his 
people. Charles would have been wise to bring him to a 
peace or to cripple him before turning on Augustus. But 
Charles XII. lacked wisdom and was a slave of blind preju- 
dice. His chief desire was to humble Poland ; he could not 
see that Peter was a vastly more dangerous opponent than 
Augustus ; and in his pur- 
suit of the latter, he lost 
sight of the growing power 
of the Czar. 

That Russia and Poland 
must not be allowed to 
work into each other's 
hands Charles saw clearly 
enough ; but the easiest 
way to prevent this was 
to push Peter to the wall, 
as Charles now could do, 
but by and by might not. 
He chose to leave his work 
half done, and so soon as 
the season opened, ad- 
vanced to the Dwina to 

relieve Riga. He reached the river the middle of July, and 
camped in the Stadts Weide north of the town. By sending 
a column with a train of artillery en evidence up river, 
Charles persuaded the enemy that he would seek to cross 
above, and led them to disperse their forces in detachments 
along the banks, having done which he bridged the river and 
ferried over his troops under cover of a heavy smoke of 
dampened straw, which the north wind blew towards the 
enemy. The latter had assembled to oppose the crossing, and 




The Dwina. 



838 BATTLE OF KLISSOW. 

the left bank was covered by numerous defenses ; but they 
remained in place and awaited attack instead of interfer- 
ing with the passage. After an initial check at landing, 
Charles defeated the enemy, with small loss to himself, 
and drove them back into Courland, whither he speedily fol- 
lowed, taking the same cities, and covering much the same 
around, as Gustavus did nearly a hundred years before. 
Thence during the rest of 1701 he advanced into Lithuania, 
taking place after place, unswerving in his determination 
to dethrone Augustus as king of Poland. In this he was 
aided by the Sapieha party, between which and its rivals, 
the Oginskys, the land was torn. His route lay up the 
Memel to Grodno, and thence down the Bobs and Narew to 
Warsaw, which opened its gates to him May 15, 1702. 

Augustus saw that he had to fight for Poland, and the 
two kings met near Klissow, a small place between Warsaw 
and Cracow, in July, 1702. Augustus had twenty-four thou- 
sand men ; Charles but half as many. The Swedes were 
marshaled as usual in two lines, with cavalry on the wings. 
Their advance was through a wood, and some manoeuvring 
had to be resorted to to get the army on suitable ground. 
But Charles pushed his offensive vigorously, and the Poles, 
who formed Augustus' right wing, fled early in the battle 
and left the latter to fight with the Saxons alone. Despite 
the good conduct of these, Charles won handsomely, at a loss 
to the Swedes of three hundred killed and eight hundred 
wounded, to two thousand killed and wounded of the enemy. 
There were forty-eight guns and one thousand seven hundred 
prisoners taken. The Polish king fled to Cracow, whither 
Charles followed, and took the place. To overrun the coun- 
try and defeat Augustus did not mean that the land was 
under the control of the conqueror. Charles had not Gus- 
tavus' solid method. The months were consumed in taking 



POLAND REDUCED. 839 

and garrisoning the towns, and in dispersing the roving bands 
of soldiers of fortune to whom peace could be no gain ; and a 
considerable force was kept out on the borders of Poland to 
head off the raids of the Russians. 

Next year, in May, 1703, Charles defeated the Saxons with 
ridiculous ease at Pultusk, northwest of Warsaw, where 
Augustus had assembled, each army having some ten thou- 
sand men. The name of Swede was enough to rout any op- 
ponent ; a bare six hundred men were lost by the enemy, so 
rapidly did they flee. Augustus retired to Thorn on the Vis- 
tula ; Charles laid siege to it, and Danzig and Elbing were 
mulcted for interference with his transports. Having finally 
got control of the land, Augustus was legally deposed and the 
Protestant Stanislaus Lesczinski was elected king of Poland. 

During these three years devoted to the control of Poland, 
Charles had lost sight of Peter and his doings ; but this most 
dangerous opponent had not only been creating an army, but 
had founded St. Petersburg in 1703 and captured Narva in 
1704. He promised to give a better account of himself when 
he next met the Swedes. 

Augustus made one more effort for Poland. Charles was 
still engaged in reducing the land, of which hundreds of 
towns sent him the keys so soon as he approached. While 
he took Leopold in September, 1704, Augustus advanced 
on Warsaw, from which the new king fled, and captured it. 
Charles and Stanislaus advanced against his army, of which 
Schulenburg was in command. This was an able general, but 
he needed all his skill to control the troops, discouraged by 
long ill-success. They were made up of Poles, half-hearted 
in his cause and ready to fight for either king, raw Saxon 
recruits, who had seen no war, and vagabond Cossacks. To 
fight such men was, as Charles said, hunting, not war. 
And be it observed, Charles so far had met no one worthy of 



840 A MASTERLY RETREAT. 

his steel. The effort of Schulenburg, his first able oppo- 
nent, was rather to keep the army intact for his master than 
to aim at an impossible victory. His was a policy really 
Fabian. 

In the Posen country, on the Warta, Schulenburg learned 
that Charles and Stanislaus, whom he thought far off, had 
reached his vicinity by a march of fifty leagues in nine days. 
Charles pushed his troops faster than any man of his day. 
Schulenburg had eight thousand foot and one thousand 
horse. In the belief that he could make his foot stand up to 
cavalry (Gustavus had done so in these same countries), he 
drew up in extra close order on ground where he could not 
be surrounded, but had his retreat open ; his first rank of 
pikemen and musketeers mixed, kneeled ; the second, slightly 
stooping, fired over the first ; the third over the two others. 
To the surprise of Charles and Stanislaus, their cavalry 
could not be driven in upon this array of pikes vomiting 
lead. Schulenburg, five times wounded, held himself all day, 
and at night retired in a hollow square to Guhran, east of 
Glogau, not far from the Oder. 

The kings followed him up sharply. Beyond Guhran as 
far as the Oder the country was heavily wooded ; and through 
this wood the Saxon general led his army, now reduced by 
half. The Swedes followed through almost impassable paths. 
Near Rutzen, at the outlet of the woods, Schulenburg crossed 
the little river Bartsch just in time to escape Charles ; but 
this indefatigable monarch found fords, led over his cavalry, 
and penned Schulenburg up in the confluence of the Bartsch 
and Oder. Schulenburg seemed lost, but by sacrificing a 
rear-guard, he got across the Oder the succeeding night. 

Schulenburg had saved Augustus his army, but the Saxon 
king made no use of it. He again abandoned Poland, per- 
sonally retired to Saxony, and fortified Dresden. While 






CHARLES IN LEIPSIC. 841 

Charles and Stanislaus were busy driving back sundry Mus- 
covite raids on the eastern border of Poland, Schulenburg 
again assembled an army and recrossed the Oder. But he 
was met by Rhenskjold (the " Parmenio of the Northern Alex- 
ander ") at Frauenstadt, February 12, 1706, and though he 
had twenty thousand men to Rkenskjold's ten thousand, was 
utterly defeated, — the Saxon recruits decamping as at Brei- 
tenfeld. The unequaled discipline which Gustavus Adol- 
phus had introduced among the Swedes had lasted one hun- 
dred years. The Russians in Schulenburg's army were cut 
down to a man to save taking prisoners. 

In September, 1706, Charles invaded Saxony. Augustus, 
who had shut himself up in Cracow, dared not return to his 
Saxon capital. At Leipsic Charles camped on the field of 
Liitzen. His army, be it said to his credit, was governed by 
the same splendid discipline he had inherited. Peace was 
dictated at Altranstadt, near Leipsic, by which Augustus 
renounced the Polish crown and recognized Stanislaus ; ab- 
jured his treaty with Russia and provisioned and paid the 
Swedish army for the winter. 

There was some question as to what part this brilliant sol- 
dier would take in the Succession War ; but Marlborough 
visited him this year, and with his persuasive tongue and some 
English gold, well laid out, won him to the cause of the allies. 
Charles, however, took no part in the war. 

Comparisons have sometimes been drawn between Charles 
and Gustavus. The structure erected by the one, who saved 
Protestantism to Germany, and the wreck left by the other, 
who found Sweden the great kingdom Gustavus had made 
it, and left it stripped of all save honor, speak for them- 
selves. Merely to compare the work done by Charles from 
1700 to 1707 — his period of success — with that done by 
Gustavus from 1630 to 1632 suffices to gauge the two men. 



842 ALL OR NONE. 

Gustavus, opposed by the best generals of the day, in twenty- 
eight months reduced to control all Germany; had he out- 
lived Liitzen, he would have at once dictated peace in Vienna. 
Charles, against opposition barely worth the name, in seven 
years reduced Poland and invaded Saxony ; but his holding 
was insecure ; what he took he did not keep, and what he 
had received from his ancestors he lost. At the same time 
Charles was a brilliant soldier within his limits. As a lieu- 
tenant, guided by the discretion of some great captain, he 
would have been incomparable. He was a good disciplina- 
rian, an untiring worker, gallantry personified in battle, and 
with the true soldier's ambition and skill. He lacked but 
one thing, — the breadth which puts aside prejudice, which 
gauges things as they really are, and which truthfully fore- 
casts the future. 

While Charles was permitting his hatred of Augustus to 
lead him to the Elbe, he lost sight of the fact that his worst 
enemy, Peter, had been given years in which to build up an 
army, and had utilized the time well. The Russian army 
now numbered many German officers of experience. The 
czar invaded Poland with sixty thousand men, to which 
force Charles' lieutenant, Levenhaupt, with his regiments scat- 
tered along the border in Livonia, Lithuania and Poland, 
could not hold head, and sat down at Leopold and later at 
Lublin to gain control of Poland. Between conquering 
Swedes, and pillaging Russians and Poles, the poor land 
groaned under fearful oppression. Charles might even now 
have made a peace with Peter at the price of allowing him a 
port at his new capital ; but he would have all or none, and 
the Baltic belonged to Sweden. 

Stanislaus returned to Poland with Rhenskjold in August, 
1707 ; Peter prudently retired into Lithuania. Having spent 
a year in Saxony, Charles left for Russia in September, 1707, 



CHARLES CHOOSES ILL. 843 

at the head of forty-three thousand men ; Levenhaupt had 
twenty thousand in Poland; there were fifteen thousand in 
Finland, and recruits were coming from Sweden. This was 
no longer an army of Swedish veterans. So many of the old 
soldiers and officers had been sent home that the solidity of 
the force had been impaired. But it was still a Swedish 
army, and with it there was no doubt in the mind of Charles 
that he would dethrone Peter as he had done Augustus. 
At this point began his miscalculations. 

Peter was at Grodno on the Memel, and here Charles sought 
him out in January, 1708, at the head of his cavalry ; and 
though, riding on with his wonted recklessness, he reached 
the place at the head of but six hundred horse, Peter, who 
was almost taken prisoner, precipitately retired. With pru- 
dent foresight the czar had made up his mind not to fight 
Charles, but to starve him out. What he lacked in brilliant 
conduct he more than made up in good judgment. Three 
routes were open to Charles : on newly founded St. Peters- 
burg via Pleskow and Novgorod, safe and apt to yield good 
results ; on Moscow via Smolensk, a marsh part way, a des- 
ert the rest; a southern route, the least good of all. On 
the first he was always near his base ; on the second there 
was peril enough; to select the third was a leap in the 
dark. 

The whole Russian army had rendezvoused in the prov- 
ince of Minsk. Despite the perilous route and the sparsely 
peopled country, quite unequal to subsist an army, Charles 
pushed on, and by June 25, 1708, he had reached the 
Beresina at Borissov, where the czar had assembled to de- 
fend his land. Charles, by a march up river, turned him 
out of his intrenchments, and he retired, devastating every- 
thing on the way to retard the Swedes. Charles followed, 
defeating by a bold attack a body of twenty thousand Rus- 



844 MAZEPPA FAILS CHARLES. 

sians intrenched behind a marsh at Hollosin, and crossed the 
Dnieper (Borysthenes) at Moghilev, then the most easterly 
of the Polish cities. Peter retired by way of Smolensk along 
the great highway to Moscow. He was gaining in strength 
as Charles lost. On September 22 Charles came near meet- 
ing his death in one of the numerous vanguard fights which 
daily occurred, and in which he exposed himself as Gustavus 
used to do. 

His position was becoming a perilous one, but he could not 
see it. To fight an enemy who will stand, to pursue a flying- 
enemy into a populous country, is one thing ; to follow an 
ever-retreating foe into a desert is safe to no captain. It is 
scarcely doubtful that Charles would have been lost, as was 
later the great Corsican, had he pushed on to Moscow ; but, 
worse still, he was persuaded to turn aside from the straight 
road to a southerly one into the Ukraine, by the Cossack 
hetman Mazeppa, who proposed to revolt from the czar, and 
who promised to join him with thirty thousand men on the 
Desna, and with abundant provisions and gold. Allies and 
food were what Charles now most needed. On the Desna 
Charles purposed to winter and prepare for a march on Mos- 
cow in the spring. But anticipating the plan, the Russians 
destroyed Mazeppa's preparations, and when Charles reached 
the rendezvous, it was to find only a fugitive demanding help, 
not a prince with reinforcements. Charles' only hope was 
now based on Levenhaupt, who was following with fifteen 
thousand men and a convoy of eight thousand wagons. But 
the Swedish general had already fallen a prey to Peter's 
army of forty thousand men, who day after day forced battle 
on him, and with his now much better troops, though at fear- 
ful cost, cut Levenhaupt's numbers down to five thousand 
men, and seized the convoy. Levenhaupt joined Charles with 
a wreck of brave men and without victual or munitions. The 



CHARLES DISABLED. 845 

Swedish monarch was cut off from Poland and Sweden, 
was reduced to twenty-four thousand half-starved men, was 
obliged to abandon his guns from lack of horses to haul 
them, and had no prospects for the future unless Stanislaus 
could reach him with a new army. It was boldness unmixed 
with caution which had led him to this ; inability to gauge 
facts as they were, to foresee contingencies. The winter was 
passed amid constant attacks by the roving bodies of Rus- 
sians. In April, 1709, Charles had but twenty thousand 
Swedes left, — but, with a courage worthy of a better fate, he 
still aimed at Moscow. Towards the end of May he under- 
took the siege of Pultowa, with the aid of native tribes which 
about doubled his numbers ; the place was of no importance, 
but contained an abundance of victual. Charles had taught 
the Russians how to make war, and he found Pultowa well 
garrisoned and hard to take. The czar came to its relief 
with eighty thousand men of regular troops, plus forty thou- 
sand Calmucks and Cossacks. Charles went out to meet the 
enemy, and on the 7th of July beat one of its detachments ; 
but he was unfortunately wounded. Peter came up, and 
Charles had to confide the attack of the 8th to Rhens- 
kjold, he himself being carried on a litter. 

The Swedes had been besieging Pultowa from one side 
only. The Russians approached from the other and, after 
crossing the Vorskla, built an intrenched camp, which shortly 
they gave up for a second one nearer the town. As a wing 
to this, opposite the Swedish camp, a number of redoubts 
were constructed between two patches of woods, a body of 
troops was sent to attempt a crossing of the Vorskla at a 
point nearer the town held by the Swedes, and Peter sat 
down to await events, as he could well afford to do. As 
usual, Charles determined on summary attack, despite dis- 
parity in numbers, and on the morning of July 8, 1709, 



846 



PULTOWA. 



the Swedish foot in four columns advanced to assault the 
redoubts, followed by the horsemen in six columns. Between 
the redoubts had been set up a large body of Russian horse ; 
this was summarily attacked and driven in confusion well 
back beyond the large camp. The two woods were too near 
together to afford a chance to form line, and the king's inten- 
tion was to pass between the redoubts without attempting to 



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Pultowa. 

capture them, form opposite and assault the intrenched camp. 
The bulk of the army carried out this programme, but the 
left wing took to assaulting the redoubts in its front, and 
finally, after great loss, got cut off from the rest of the army. 
Backing on one of the woods, the king formed line, under 
the fire of one hundred and twenty Russian guns, and 
advanced to the assault of the camp. Parts of his line 
reached it, penetrated it ; parts did not. But all along the 
line the gallant Swedes encountered opposition such as Rus- 
sians had never yet shown. Peter's seven years had borne 



CHARLES AMONG THE TURKS. 



847 



fruit, and he now had a stanch army. Gradually falling 
back, the Swedes were followed up, and a heavy battle ensued 
at the edge of the plain. Charles, on his litter, could do but 
little ; General Rkenskjbld was captured, and after sacrificing 
a large number of his men, the king saw that the battle 
was lost. He retired by the way he had come, and moved 
in fairly good order to the confluence of the Dnieper and 
Vorskla. There he counted, all told, invalided and for duty, 
sixteen thousand men. The loss in the battle had been fully 
four thousand. 

The battle of Pultowa ended the career of Charles XII., so 
far as any but trivial operations were concerned. The posi- 
tion of Sweden was rudely disturbed ; Peter 
established that of Russia. Having taken 
refuge with the Turks, Charles remained 
with them until 1714, obstinately seeking 
through their means to conduct further 
campaigns against Russia. In 1711 he 
did succeed in placing Peter in a ques- 
tionable situation on the Pruth, but the 
czar cleverly managed to buy a peace from 
the Turks, in which it was provided that 
Charles might return unmolested to Swe- 
den. But, angry at the peace, the king 
would not leave Bender, a camp in Bessara- 
bia where he played the role of a species of 
royal captive, and which, indeed, in 1713, he undertook to de- 
fend against an army that sought to compel him to withdraw. 

Nothing militates so greatly against the reputation of 
Charles XII. as a soldier, as this refusal to return home. In 
this era of danger, Sweden needed her king. Charles had 
ability enough, Sweden had elasticity enough, between them 
to bring matters back to some kind of satisfactory basis. 




Russian Soldier. 



848 



LACKING ONE TRAIT. 




His strategic errors in his Russian campaign are easily for- 
given : another and greater soldier committed such. But no 
strategy is sound which has not patriotism as a basis. The 
greatest soldiers have sought primarily the 
good of the fatherland: Alexander made Mace- 
don govern the earth ; Hannibal had Rome at 
his feet, but stupid Carthage would not accept 
the gift ; Caesar and Napoleon, on the theory 
of L'Etat c'est moi, were patriotic strategists ; 
Gustavus and Frederick were truly such. On 
this test the military reputation of Charles 
XII. is shattered. From mere childish preju- 
dice — spite is the better word — he would not 
return to his country when his country needed 
him, because a free return was given him, not 
Turkish Soldier, conquered. He remained in Bender yet three 
years, wearing out his welcome, but treated 
with great magnificence. 

Many volumes have been written about this singular mon- 
arch ; nothing is easier than to fill others. He was a man of 
genius, without a balance-wheel, and in war the latter is the 
greater part of genius. Brilliant as few men have ever been, 
a soldier to his finger-tips, he remains on the page of history 
as holding no greater rank than a magnificent corps-com- 
mander. He returned to Sweden in 1714, and was shot, by 
an assassin probably, in front of Friedrichshall, in 1718. 
Sweden was despoiled of all her provinces, and became a 
minor power. What she owed to Gustavus she lost through 
Charles XII., — a monarch possessing abundant courage, 
abundant skill, abundant means, but lacking the one trait 
which he needed to make him truly great, — discretion. 



APPENDIX A. 

SOME MODERN MARCHES. 

Marches, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were apt to 
be slow, owing to bad roads, long trains, numerous non-combatants, 
and the habit of ploying an army into several columns, for some of 
which roads had to be prepared. Following are a few samples, 
most of which, tried by our standard, are ordinary ; a few, good 
for any era. 

1. In October and November, 1632, Gustavus, with about 20,000 
men of all arms, marched over bad roads, from Donauworth to 
Naumburg, some 270 miles by the route he took, in 18 days, or 15 
miles a day. 

2. In August, 1644, Conde", with about 10,000 men of all arms, 
marched from the Moselle to Freiburg, 210 miles in 13 days, or 16 
miles a day. 

3. In 1657, Turenne, with over 30,000 men of all arms, marched 
from the Scheldt-Sambre region to the Lys, 75 miles in 3 days, 
or 25 miles a day. 

4. In June, 1674, Turenne, with 9,000 men of all arms, marched 
from the Rhine to Sinsheim, 90 miles in 4 days, or 17^ miles a day. 

5. In October, 1704, Charles XII., with 20,000 men of all arms, 
marched from the Vistula to the Oder, over bad roads, 180 miles in 
10 days, or 18 miles a day. 

6. In August, 1706, Eugene, with 25,000 men of all arms, 
marched from Reggio to Villa Stellona, 240 miles in 16 days, or 
15 miles a day. Counting out a rest-day, owing to intense heat, the 
rate was 16 miles a day. 

7. In July, 1708, Marlborough, with 65.000 men of all arms, 
marched from near Brussels on Oudenarde. 40 miles in 48 hours, or 
20 miles a day. 

8. In September, 1709, the duke of Hesse-Cassel, with 10,000 
men of all arms, marched from Douay to Obourg and Havre, 49 
miles in 56 hours, or 21 miles a day. 



850 



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INDEX. 



Administrator, 90. 

Adrianople, battle of, 3. 

Agineourt, 15. 

Alberghatti, General, 765 et seq. ; 819. 

Aldringer, 244, 288, 345, 414. 

Allerheim, battle of, 478 et seq. ; losses 
at, 485. 

Almanza, battle of, 812. 

Alte Veste, 355 et seq. 

Ambulance, introduced, 577. 

Ambusb, Byzantine, 4 ; rare, 7. 

Auhalt, princes, 275. 

Anklam, 167. 

Army, standing, 20 ; ancient, not large, 
29; with simple weapons, 29; of 
Various nations, 34 ; grows more 
common, 569 ; large, 576 ; slow of 
movement, 577. 

Arnim, Count, 112, 137, 139, 248, 
277, 303, 322, 326, 329, 330, 365, 
372, 380, 415. 

Arquebusier, 21. 

Arras, siege of, 541 et seq. 

Art of war, periods of, 29; simple 
among ancients, 30 ; ill-digested in 
Middle Ages, 31 ; shaped by Gusta- 
vus and France, 570. 

Artillery tactics in 16th century, 23 ; 
Swedish guns, 42, 43 ; practice im- 
proves, 45 ; position in line, 53 ; im- 
provements in, 572. 

Augsburg^ peace of, 89 ; Gustavus 
captures, 318, 500, 501. 

Augustus of Poland, 838 et seq. 

Baden, Prince Louis of, 699, 705, 

712, 718. 
Baden-Durlach, 97 et seq. 
Barwalde, 193. 
Bandolier, 37. 
Ban^r, Field-Marshal John, 82, 189, 

206, 207-209, 231, 237, 260, 2S1, 

296, 306, 348, 415, 439. 
"Bastion," 149. 
" Battles," 22. 
Battles, rare, 7, 575 ; accidental, 7 ; 



important among ancients, 30 ; util- 
ity not understood, 31 ; acts of a, 53 ; 
tactics of, 54 ; indecisive, 580. 

Baudissin, 135, 190, 203, 207-209, 297, 
367,370. 

Bavaria, Elector of, operates with Vil- 
lars, 703 ; at Blenheim, 725 et seq. 

Bavaria, importance of, 707. 

Bayonet, origin of, 38 ; introduction of, 
570 ; charge, 706, 827. 

Beck, 454. 

Berlin, 215. 

Bernard of Weimar, 234, 242, 246, 
247, 271, 287, 348, 367-369 et seq., 
378, 381. 391 ; at Liitzen, 396, 413, 
415 ; at Nordlingen, 416, 439, 441. 

Berwick, 770, 781, 786, 812, 813. 

Bethlen Gabor, 93, 95, 97. 

Bishop, only a prince, 90. 

Blenheim, French position at, 721, 725, 
726 ; battle of, 723 et seq. ; Marl- 
borough and Eugene reconnoitre, 
724 ; allied position at, 726 ; Cutts' 
attack, 726 ; Eugene's attack, 727 ; 
French defense, 728 ; Marlborough 
crosses Nebelbach, 728 ; breaks cen- 
tre, 729 ; Eugene breaks left, 720 ; 
Marlborough captures Blenheim, 
729 ; losses at, 730 ; retreat of French, 
730; honors divided, 731; discussion 
of battle, 732 et seq. 

Bogislav, 156, 161, 162 et seq., 170. 

Bohemia, at beginning of Thirty 
Years' War, 92, 94. 

Bombard of Rhodes, 18. 

Bombardelle, 19. 

Boufflers, 621 et seq., 695, 784, 802 et 
seq. 

Bouqnoi, 93 et seq. 

Bournonville, 621 et seq. 

Bow, used by legion, 3. 

Brahe, Count, 165, 391. 

Brahe, Countess Ebba von, SO. 

Breitenfeld, 253 et seq. ; numbers at, 
259 ; Saxons at, 260 ; chart of, 262 ; 
Pappenheim's error, 263 ; Pappen- 



854 



INDEX. 



heim defeated, 264 ; the Saxons 
driven off, 265 ; Tilly sees his chance, 
266 ; Gustavus manoeuvres, 267 ; 
Tilly's Walloons, 268 ; resume* of, 
269, 270. 

Brigade, Gustavus originates, 50 ; 
formation of, 51, 256. 

Brussels, besieged by Elector of Bava- 
ria, 790, 791 ; Marlborough relieves 
it, 791. 

Burgstall, 241, 357 et seq. 

Burgundy, duke of, 770 et seq. 

Byzantine military art, 4 ; discretion 
valued, 5. 

Cadogan, General, 774 et seq. 

Calvinism, 89. 

Cambray, siege and relief of, 554, 555. 

Campaigns, object of, 579. 

Camps, protected, 26 ; how made, 574. 

Cannon, various kinds, 42-46 ; English, 
45, 46. 

Caprara, 607 et seq., 617, 674. 

Carpi, combat of, 678. 

Cartridges, 37 ; artillery, 43. 

Casimir, John, 66, 153. 

Cassano, battle of, 740-742. 

Casualties, not a sure test of discipline, 
484. 

Catinat, wins victory at Staffarda, 658, 
665 et seq. ; in Italy, 676 ; outflanked 
by Eugene, 677 ; retires, 679 ; re- 
lieved, 679, 680. 

Catholic League, 92. 

Cavalry, rise of, 1 ; displaced, 2 ; can- 
not stand alone, 2 ; massed by Con- 
stantine, 2 ; destroys an army, 3 ; 
uppermost, 3 ; barbarian, 3 ; Ro- 
man adopts bow, 4 ; tactics in 16th 
century, 22 ; prefers firearms, 24 ; 
how divided in 16th century, 39, 40 ; 
irregular, 40 ; slow, 41 ; Swedish 
fast, 41 ; improved by Gustavus, 52 ; 
position in line, 53 ; the principal 
arm, 445; improvements in, 571; 
uses firearms too much, 573 ; numer- 
ous, 576. 

Champ Blanc, battle of, 523 et seq. 

Charles I. at Naseby, 429. 

Charles II. at Worcester, 434 et seq. 

Charles IX. 66 ; death of, 73. 

Charles Philip, 76, 77, 83. 

Charles William, 170, 171. 

Charles XII. , his character, 832 ; com- 
bination against him, 832 ; attacks 
and defeats Denmark, 833 ; relieves 
Narva, 836 ; crosses Dwina, 837 ; de- 
feats Augustus of Poland at Klis- 
sow, 838 ; defeats Saxons at Poltusk, 



839 ; defeats Sehulenburg, 840 ; de- 
thrones Augustus, 840 ; dictates 
terms in Leipsic, 84l ; influenced by 
Marlborough, 841 ; compared to 
Gustavus, 841, 842 ; follows Peter, 
843, 844 ; his strategic mistakes, 844 ; 
moves into the Ukraine, 844 ; be- 
sieges Pultowa, S45 ; wounded, 845 ; 
beaten at Pultowa, 846 ; takes ref- 
uge with Turks, 847 ; at Bender, 
847, S48 ; criticism of, 847, 848 ; his 
death, 848. 

Chiari operation, 682. 

Christian of Anhalt, 90, 95. 

Christian of Brunswick, 97, 99. 

Christian of Denmark, attacks Sweden, 
74 ; 101 ; enters war, 103 ; defeated, 
109; sues for peace, 114; let off 
easily, 114; helps Stralsund, 134. 

Circles, German, 89. 

Citizen soldier, 32. 

Clempenow, 168. 

Coehorn, 578, 695. 

Colberg, 181, 184 et seq. ; captured, 
207. 

Company, size of, 38 ; officers of, 39. 

Conde" the Great, his youth, 450 ; ad- 
vances on Rocroy, 451 ; in line before 
Rocroy, 452 ; at the battle of, 454 
et seq. ; joins Turenne, 458 ; divides 
forces, 460; attacks Mercy, 460; 
rejoins Turenne, 461 ; attacks again, 
462 ; outflanks Mercy, 463 ; advances 
on Philipsburg, 464 ; friendship for 
Turenne, 567 ; marches up Neckar 
with Turenne, 475 ; manoeuvres 
against Mercy, 476; at Allerheim, 
479 et seq. ; serves under Duke of 
Orleans, 488 ; succeeds to command, 
489 ; takes Furnes, 490 ; moves on 
Dunkirk, 492, 493 ; opens lines, 494 ; 
opposed by Spanish army, 494 ; cap- 
tures Dunkirk, 495 ; relieves Cour- 
tray, 495 ; in Catalonia, 514 ; wins 
battle of Lens, 515, 516 ; imprisoned, 
520 ; leads army of the princes, 524 ; 
attacks Turenne at Gien, 525 ; op- 
erates near Paris, 529 et seq. ; at bat- 
tle of St. Antione, 530 et seq. ; at 
Corbeil, 532, 533 ; in Champagne, 
533 ; invades Picardy, 535 ; his cam- 
paign on the Somme, 536 et seq.; 
beseiges Arras, 540 et seq. ; defeated 
at Arras, 545 ; his operations on 
Scheldt, 546 ; relieves Valenciennes, 
548 et seq.; able work of, 551 ; re- 
lieves Cambray, 555 ; proposes to 
relieve Dunkirk, 560, 561 ; reaches 
Dunkirk, 563 ; compared to Turenne, 



INDEX. 



855 



539, 567 ; conquers Franche Comtek 
583 ; with army invading- Holland, 
586, 587 ; against Prince of Orange, 
600 ; at Senef, 602. 

Conti, T., 158, 161, 170, 176. 

Corbeil, operations near, 532, 533. 

Corpus Evangelieorum, 113, 248. 302, 
331, 336, 337. 

Courtray, 495. 

Craatz, 331. 

Cr£cy, foot at, 6, 15. 

Cromwell, 421 et seq. ; begins New 
Model, 422 ; imitator of Gustavus, 
422 ; his yeomen, 422 ; at Edgehill, 
422 ; how he learned his drill, 424 ; 
at Grantham and Gainsborough, 424; 
at Marston Moor, 425 ; his soldiers 
really regulars, 427 ; New Model, 
427 ; at Naseby, 428 ; in south of 
England, 430 ; in Wales, 430 ; at 
Preston Pans, 430 ; in Ireland, 431 
et seq.; at Drogheda, 431 ; at Wex- 
ford and Clonmel, 431 ; his " massa- 
cres," 431 ; captain-general, 432 ; at 
Dunbar, 433 ; at Worcester, 434 et 
seq. ; gauged as a general, 435 etseq., 
553. 

Cross-bow, 15, 16, 20. 

Crusades, contained no lessons, 8, 9. 

Crutch for musket, 37. 

Culveriu, 19. 

Custrin,211, 217,235. 

Cutts, Lord, at Blenheim, 726. 

Damitz, 162, 163, 165. 

Dammgarten, 175. 

Dampierre, 93 et seq. 

Danzig, Sigisniund in, 85 ; 122 ; its 

value, 123 ; naval fight at, 128 ; 

siege raised, 133. 
D'Arco, Count, 714, 715. 
Daun, General, 765 et seq., 770. 
Demmin, 180, 202, 204. 
De Witt, 583, 587. 
Diet, German, 88. 
Dinkelsbiihl, 476, 484. 
Discipline, none till 16th century, 25, 

57 ; of Swedish army, 58, 59 ; im- 
proved, 578. 
Dominium Maris Baltici, 121, 151 ; 

established, 272. 
Donauworth, 91, 312, 331, 716. 
Don John, 555, 556, 560 et seq. 
Douay, captured by allies, 818 et seq. ; 

Villars and Berwick at, 818 ; cannot 

relieve, 819. 
Dragoons, 24, 40, 52. 
Drogheda, 431. 
Dueling, 59. 



Dunbar, 433. 

Dunes, battle of the, 563 et seq. 

Dunkirk, captured by Conde, 488 et 
seq. ; description of, 490, 491 ; siege 
of, by Turenne, 553; its situation, 
559 ; surrender, 566. 

Dwina, the battle of, 837. 

Dyle, lines of the, 747 et seq. 

Edgehill, 423, 424. 

Edict of Restitution, 115, 147, 330. 

Electors, 88. 

Empire, German, its constitution, 88. 

Engineering, Swedish, 60 ; grows, 578. 

English long-bow, 10. 

Entzheim, battle of, 614 et seq. ; losses 
at, 624. 

Eric, King, 65. 

Essex, 422. 

Estates, Swedish, 65. 

Estates of the empire, 89. 

Etampes, siege of, 526 et seq. 

Eugene, Prince, 645, 665 ; his early 
services, 670, 671 ; at Zenta, 673, 674 ; 
in arrest, 673, 674 ; in Italy, 675 et 
seq. ; builds road down Adige, 677 ; 
outflanks Catinat, 67S ; advances to 
the Oglio, 680 ; his victory at Chiari, 
682 ; captures Cremona and Villeroi, 
685 ; retires south of the Po, 687, 
68S ; at Luzzara, 689 ; compared to 
Vendome, 691 ; meets Marlborough, 
712 ; at Stollhofen, 712 ; marcbes to 
join Marlborough, 717 ; joins Marl- 
borough, 719 ; reconnoitres, 720 ; 
decides on battle, 724 ; his record as 
a general, 730 et seq. ; Italy, 737 et 
seq.; checked on the Mincio, 738; 
turns young Vendome's position, 
739 ; tries to cross Adda, 739 ; at- 
tacks Cassano, 740 ; twice wounded, 
741 ; retires, 742 ; manoeuvres on 
Adda, 743 ; unable to reach Savoy, 
743 ; had manoeuvred cleverly, 744, 
745 ; in Turin campaign, 751) et seq. ; 
starts for Savoy, south of Po, 760 ; 
his rapid march, 761 et seq. ; reaches 
Sfcradella, 762 ; reaches Turin, 763 ; 
beats enemy, 766 ; his march against 
Toulon, 770 ; joins Marlborough, 
773 ; advances on Lille, 784 ; at 
Lille, 785 et seq. ; over-gallant, 789 ; 
opposes Villars in Flanders, 793 ; 
reconnoitres, 794 ; and Marlborough 
at Tournay, 705 ; and Marlborough 
advance on Mons, 796 ; turn Villars' 
line, 796; at Malplaquet, 799 et seq.; 
compared with Marlborough, 809 ; 
at Douay, 818 et seq. ; advances with 



856 



INDEX. 



Marlborough on Arras, 820; with 
Marlborough captures Bethune, St. 
Venant and Aire, 820, 821 ; on the 
Rhine, 821 ; succeeds Marlborough 
in command of Dutch army, 822; 
suffers from bad faith of English, 
823 ; captures Quesnoy, 824 ; his po- 
sition at Marchiennes-Denain-Lan- 
drecies, 825 ; broken by Villars, 826 ; 
retires on Tournay, 827 ; operates 
on Rhine, 828 ; campaigns against 
Turks, 829 ; victory at Belgrade, 
829. 

Fairfax, 426, 428, 432. 

Falkenberg, 171, 220 et seq. 

Ferdinand, Emperor, 92, 94 ; his suc- 
cesses, 111 ; his ideal, 113 ; his opin- 
ion of Gustavus, 144; his situation 
in 1630, 147 ; 277, 278 ; in ill case, 
303 ; turns to Wallenstein, 304, 322 ; 
at end of his resources, 326 ; turns 
to Wallenstein, 327 ; the winner at 
Liitzen, 397 ; 413 ; makes peace with 
Saxony, 420. 

Feudalism, encouraged horseman, 6 ; 
disappears, 17. 

Field fortifications, 61. 

File, decreases, 49, 572. 

Flag, Swedish, 48. 

Fleurus, battle of, 657- 

Flossgraben, 338, 391 et seq. 

Footman, main reliance, 2. 

Forlorn hopes, 23. 

Fortification, permanent, 61. 

Fortresses, necessary to store war mate- 
rial, 31 ; their influence, 579. 

Frankfort on Main, 291. 

Frankfort on Oder, 211. 

Frederick of the Palatinate, 93 ; chosen 
king, 94. 

Freiburg, 447, 448 ; operations at, 458 
et seq., 829. 

Fronde, wars of the, 519 ; ended, 534. 

Fuensaldegna, Count, 541 et seq. 

Fuentes, Count, 453, 456. 

Fugger, 244, 288. 

Fiirstenberg, 244, 324. 

Gallas, 321, 322, 345, 365, 371, 381, 441. 
Gal way, Lord, 811. 
Gardie de la, 68, 76, 153. 
Garz, 170, 187 et seq. 
Gassion, 452. 

George William, elector of Branden- 
burg, 121, 193, 195, 217. 
Gien, operation of, 525. 
Gosiecowski, 118. 
Grammont, 458, 479 et seq., 484. 



Grand-tactics, 55. 

Great Elector, 584, 589, 607, 625, 643. 

Greek fire, 18. 

Greifenhagen, 170, 188 et seq. 

Greifswalde, 206, 235 ; captured. 236. 

Grenadiers, how armed, 35. 

Gunpowder, substances like, ancient, 
17 ; references to, 17, 18 ; in 14th 
century, 18 ; at Cr^cy, IS ; used by 
Moors, 1 8 ; an effect, not a cause, 
27 ; keynote of new science of war, 
29. 

Gunlocks, 37. 

Guns, kinds of Swedish, 42 ; leather, 
43. 

Gustavus, no art until his day, 5 ; first 
perfects system, 34 ; organizes in- 
fantry, 36 ; lightens muskets, 37 ; his 
organization, 39, 40 ; his cavalry or- 
ganization, 41 ; speeds up cavalry 41, 
52 ; his artillery, 42 ; lightens guns, 
42, 43 ; introduces uniforms, 48 ; ori- 
ginates brigade, 50 ; his method of 
battle, 54, 55 ; originates mobility, 
55 ; decreases train, 57 ; introduces 
prayers and strict promotion, 58 ; 
his regulations, 58 ; a clever engineer, 
60; his " Instructions," 60 ; birth of, 
66 ; as a child, 67 ; growing quali- 
ties, 67 ; his education, 67 ; his tu- 
tors, 68 ; his studies, 68, 69 ; enters 
army, 69 ; his favorite studies, 69, 
70 ; his first glimpse of war, 70 ; de- 
clared of age, 70 ; his first command, 
70; his clever ruse, 70; his first 
campaign, 70, 71 ; ascends throne, 
73 ; his war with Denmark, 74 et 
seq. ; his novel method, 74 ; nearly 
drowned, 75 ; his success at Wax- 
holm, 75 ; makes peace, 76 ; his love- 
affairs, 76 ; his war with Russia, 77, 
78 ; invades Ingria, 77 ; gains repu- 
tation, 78 ; his peace with Russia, 78 ; 
his truce with Poland, 79 ; travels, 
80 ; his love for Countess Brahe, 80.; 
his morality, 80 ; organizes finances 
and troops, 81 ; invades Livonia, 82 ; 
captures Riga, 83 ; marches through 
Courland, 83 ; conquers truce, 83 ; 
compels Danzig to neutrality, 84 ; 
his support at home, 85 ; his work 
in Thirty Years' War, 87, 88 ; his 
views on German struggle, 101 ; his 
military plan, 102 ; proposes to help 
Protestants, 103 ; aids Stralsund, 112 
etseq.; his ideal, 113; determines to 
enter Germany, 114, 136; sails for 
Dwina, 117 ; defeats Poles twice, 
118; his victory at Walhof, 119; 



INDEX. 



857 



sails for Pillau, 119 ; his blunt talk 
to Brandenburg, 121 ; his plans, 
121 ; besieges Danzig, 122 ; reviet- 
uals Mewe, 123, 124; his reverses 
while absent, 126 ; rejoins army, 
126 ; captures Prussian forces, 126 ; 
wounded at Danzig, 126 ; too ven- 
turesome, 127 ; again wounded, 127 ; 
storms Wormditt, 128 ; not well 
placed at Danzig, 129 ; naval en- 
gagement near Danzig, 131 ; victory 
near Danzig, 133 ; raises siege of 
Danzig, 133 ; too little known of his 
battles, 133 ; excluded from Con- 
gress, 136 ; appealed to by Germany, 
136 ; fails in Stuhm operation, 138 ; 
his victory at Nogat, 138 ; wins 
six years' truce from Poland, 139 ; 
his Polish wars end, 140 ; his train- 
ing in, 141 ; his improvements in, 
141 ; his motives in entering Ger- 
many, 143, 150 ; outlook in Ger- 
many, 146 et seq. ; demands on 
France, 149 ; his high tone, 149 ; his 
plans, 151, 152 ; issues no declara- 
tion of war, 155 ; sails from Sweden, 
156, 157 ; lands in Germany, 157 ; 
reconnoitres, 160 ; clears Usedom 
and Wollin, 160 ; captures Stettin, 
162, 163 ; fortifies his conquests, 
164 ; his position, 165 ; captured, 
166 ; extends his conquests, 166 ; ex- 
tends his occupation, 166 et seq. ; 
moves on Mecklenburg, 173; re- 
ceives no German help, 174 ; his five 
column plan, 177 ; his caution, 180 ; 
defeats Savelli. 180 ; manoeuvres 
near Stettin, 184 ; his councils of 
war, 185 ; attacks Garz, 187 ; storms 
Greifenhagen, 189 ; defeats Schaum- 
berg, 190 ; forces neutrality on Bran- 
denburg, 193 ; camps at Barwalde, 
193 ; his gain so far, 194 ; makes 
treaty with France, 195 ; his treaty 
with Magdeburg, 198 ; moves on 
Demmin, 202 ; captures Loitz, 204 ; 
captures Demmin, 204 ; his strong 
line, 205 ; contemplates winter-quar- 
ters, 205 ; moves on Frankfort, 210 ; 
captures Ciistrin, 211; storms Frank- 
fort, 212 ; his audacity, 212 ; captures 
Landsberg, 213 ; his plans, 214 ; plans 
relief of Magdeburg, 216 ; starts for 
Elbe, 218 ; his road barred, 218,220, 
224 ; retires, 230 ; his position on the 
Spree-Havel, 231 ; forces Branden- 
burg to his plan, 235 ; receives rein- 
forcements, 237 ; his bastion, 23S ; 
marches on Elbe, 238 ; crosses, 239 ; 



almost disheartened, 240; attacks 
Tilly's cavalry parties, 240 ; defeats 
Tilly at Werben, 242 ; his position 
safe, 243; on the Havel, 246; ad- 
vances towards Saxony, 250 ; makes 
treaty with Saxony, 251 ; crosses the 
Elbe, 251 ; advances on Tilly, 253 ; 
wins at Breitenfeld, 260 ; the Pro- 
testant hero, 270 ; what he had 
gained, 273 et seq. ; his approaches 
to Walleo stein, 275 ; what route ? 
276 ; rejects suggested march on Vi- 
enna, 277 ; his plans, 278, 279 ; crit- 
icised, 280, 281 ; heads for the Main, 
282 ; new strategic position, 282 ; 
his forces at Erfurt, 283 ; captures 
Wiirzburg, 285 ; storms Marien- 
burg, 285 ; new treaties, 286 ; moves 
down the Main, 290; captures places 
down to Frankfort, 291 ; attempts 
to assassinate, 293 ; crosses Rhine, 
294 ; captures Mainz, 294 ; levies 
contributions, 295 ; fortifies Mainz, 
295 ; drives Spaniards away from 
Main, 296 ; forces, 299 et seq. ; holds 
court at Mainz, 301 ; might have 
become king of Germany, 302 ; had 
entirely changed affairs, 303 ; his 
situation, 305; too many detach- 
ments, 306 ; moves against Tilly, 
308 ; enters Niirnberg, 310 ; crosses 
Danube, 310-312 ; his chances on the 
Lech, 314 ; reconnoitres, 315 ; throws 
bridge over Lech, 316; forces Lech, 
316; does not pursue, 317; moves 
up to Augsburg, 318 ; advances on 
Ingolstadt, 319 ; besieges Ingolstadt, 
320 ; moves on Munich, 320 ; his 
honesty misconstrued, 326 ; politics 
turn against him, 329 ; labors with 
John George, 329-331 ; starts for 
Saxony, 332 ; not sufficiently concen- 
trated, 332 ; too late to prevent junc- 
tion of enemies, 333 ; his uncertainty 
as to action, 334 ; its cause, 335 ; his 
forces, 336 ; fidelity to Niirnberg, 
337 ; intrenches Niirnberg, 338 ; cau- 
tious, 341 ; offers battle, 343, 352, 
354, 361 ; orders in his lieutenants, 
348; his plans for Oxenstiern. 349; 
roads open to his reinforcements, 
350; his reinforcements join. 351 J 
captures Fiirth, 355 ; determines to 
attack Wallenstein, 355 ; storms Alte 
Veste, 356 ; criticised for his at- 
tack, 35S ; negotiations with Wallen- 
stein, 359; breaks the deadlock, 
361 ; frank acknowledgment, 363 ; 
moves to Swabia, 365 ; contemplates 



858 



INDEX. 



movement down Danube, 366 ; and on 
Constance, 366 ; compared to Wal- 
lenstein, 373 ; his plans, 376 ; danger 
to his base, 376 ; his relations with 
other nations, 376 ; marches north, 
377 ; urges John George to action, 
380 ; his council of war, 382 ; ener- 
getic, 383 ; decides on battle, 385 ; 
his position at Liitzeu, 390 et seq. ; 
his tactical purpose at Liitzen, 392 ; 
his slow manoeuvring, 392 ; killed, 
394; too little known about him, 
398 ; his appearance, 399 ; intelli- 
gence, 399 ; will, 399 ; quick temper, 
399 ; piety, 399 ; poetry, 399 ; his 
character, 400 ; justice, 400 ; his in- 
timates, 400 ; busy habits, 401 ; opin- 
ion of his opponents, 401 ; courage, 
401, 402 ; his method, 402 ; his work 
in Thirty Years' War, 402-406 ; as 
opposed to Wallenstein, 406 ; his 
alternating boldness and caution, 
407 ; his councils of war, 408 ; his 
decisiveness, 408 ; his broad method, 
408 ; his vigor, 409 ; the secret of 
his successes, 410 ; his work made 
toward civilization, 410 ; father of 
the modern art of war, 411 ; his 
lieutenants' failure emphasizes his 
method, 440 ; his clear-cut purpose, 
486 ; his method, 517 ; imitated, 
576 ; unintelligently so, 579 ; chief 
of his era, 581 ; his influence on bat- 
tles, 733 ; compared to Charles XII., 
842 ; a patriot, 848. 
Gustavus Vasa, 63, 64. 

Halberd, Swiss, 11. 
Hamilton, 237. 
Hand gun, 18. 

Hesse, prince of, in Italy, 760 et seq. 
Hesse-Cassel, invaded by Tilly, 244. 
Hocquincourt, 524 et seq., 557. 
Holeke, 345, 349, 365, 371, 414. 
Holland, invasion of by France, 582 et 

seq. ; peculiar terrain, 588. 
Horn, Field-Marshal Gustavus, 82, 173, 

182, 185, 201, 207-209, 231, 261, 

290, 293, 306, 307, 318, 323, 324, 

368, 414, 417. 

Infantry, loses caste, 4 ; Gothic in It- 
aly, 5 ; Teutons used, 5 ; reappears, 
10 ; reasserts itself, 11 ; 16th century 
tactics, 22 ; in 17th century, 35 ; 
Swedish, how armed, 36 ; how it fired, 
52 ; Turenne complains of French, 
465 ; improvement in arms of, 570. 

Ingolstadt, 319, 320. 



Ireton, 428. 
Ironsides, 422, 425. 

Jesuits, 90, 113, 122, 133. 

John George, Elector of Saxony, 90, 
92, 96, 195, 317 ; refuses Gustavus 
passage, 219 ; blamed for disaster to 
Magdeburg, 230; his Third Party, 
248; treats with Gustavus, 251; 
joins him with his army, 252 ; urges 
battle, 252 ; 277, 303, 321, 326 ; his 
treachery, 329 ; negotiates with Wal- 
lenstein, 330 ; his vacillation, 365 
et seq. ; faithless, 372 ; his indiffer- 
ence, 379 ; makes peace with Ferdi- 
nand, 419. 

John, King, 65. 



_j, 161, 167. 

Kara, Mustapha, 646 et seq., 829. 

Kirchheim, operation near, 502. 

Klissow, battle of, 838. 

Knight, his value, 6 ; at Hastings, 6 ; 
had no art, 6; irresistible on good 
ground, 6; useless on poor, 6; un- 
reliable, 8 ; dismounted, 16. 

Kniphausen, 161, 182, 203, 207, 361, 
381, 391. 

Koniezpolski, breaks siege of Danzig, 
125 ; 127, 129 ; operates against Dan- 
zig, 132 ; defeated near Danzig, 132 ; 
135, 137. 

Konigsberg, 121. 

Kosen defile, 379, 381. 

La Ferte*, 454 et seq., 528 et seq., 548 
et seq., 554, 556. 

La Feuillade, 738, 760. 

Landsberg, 190, 193 ; captured, 213. 

Landsknecht, 14. 

Lauenburg, 183. 

Lech, the, 314. 

Legion, degenerates, 2 ; relies on mis- 
siles, 3, 

Leipsic, convention of, 196, 234 ; cap- 
tured by Tilly, 250 ; the plain of, 
258 ; captured by Wallenstein, 375. 

Lens, battle of, 515, 516. 

Lesczinski, Stanislaus, 839. 

Leslie, at Dunbar, 433. 

Leslie, Colonel, 134, 158, 161. 

Levenliaupt, 824 et seq. 

Leyden, 491, 495, 565. 

Lille, siege of, 784 et seq. ; first con- 
voy reaches, 785 ; lines opened, 786 ; 
French attempt at relief, 787 ; met 
by allies, 788; heavy fighting at, 
788, 789 ; Boufflers surrenders town, 
789 ; losses at, 789. 



INDEX. 



859 



Logistics of Thirty Years' War, 513. 

Loitz, 203. 

Longbow, English, 10, 14, 15. 

Lorraine, Charles of, at Vienna, 646 et 
seq. ; in battle of Vienna, 652. 

Lorraine, duke of, 287, 295, 327, 469 
et seq., 495, 527 et seq., 532. 607, 
621, 643. 

Lottuni, Count, 695, 781, 799 et seq. 

Louis XIV., 519, 527, 553, 557, 568, 
582 et seq., 588, 643, 644, 654, 659, 
669,672, 699, 737, 790, 792. 

Louvois, 588 ; his system, 656. 

Liibeck, peace of, 136. 

Ltineburg, 367, 370, 380. 

Lutheranisra, 89. 

Lutter, battle of, 108. 

Liitzen, vicinity of, 378 ; strength of 
armies, 384 ; uncertain records of, 
387 ; description of terrain, 388 ; po- 
sition of armies at, 388 et seq. ; the 
course of the battle, 392 et seq. ; a 
Swedish victory, 396. 

Luxemburg, Duke of, 589, 600 ; at 
Fleurus, 657 ; at SteenMrke, 660 ; at 
Neerwinden, 663 ; his death, 665. 

Luzzara, battle of, 689. 

Magdeburg, 170, 171 ; blockaded, 197; 
treaty with Gustavus, 198 ; Gustavus' 
plans as to, 213, 216 et seq ; siege of, 
221 et seq.; disagreements within, 
221, 222 ; its defenses, 221 et Sfq. ; 
storming of outworks, 223 ; Tilly 
arrives, 223 ; Falkenberg withdraws 
within walls, 224 ; Gustavus cannot 
reach, 225 ; suburbs leveled, 225 ; 
Tilly negotiates, 225 ; treats with 
Tilly, 2^6 et seq.; stormed, 227; 
plundered, 228 ; burned, 228, 297. 

Mainz, siege of, 291 et seq. ; Gustavus' 
court at, 301. 

Malchin, 204. 

Malplaquet, terrain of, 798 et seq. ; 
battle of, 799 et seq- ; Marlborough 
and Eugene reconnoitre, 799 ; Vil- 
lars heavily intrenches, 8U0 ; plan of 
the battle, 801 ; Schulemberg at- 
tacks, 803 ; Lottum attacks, 803 ; 
both thrown back, 804; the Prince 
of Orange assaults, 804 ; defeated 
with heavy loss, 804 ; Eugene pushes 
back Villars, 805 ; Withers attacks 
Villars' left, 805 ; Villars weakens 
his centre, 805 ; Marlborough pushes 
in Orkney, 805 ; Orange again as- 
saults, 806 ; Boufflers' fine retreat, 
806 ; immense losses, 807 ; without 
result, 808. 



Manoeuvring, supplants battles, 31 ; 

slow, 575 ; highly considered, 580. 
Mansfeld, Count, 95-99, 105, 107, 108. 
Maradas, 371. 

Marches, how conducted, 24, 54, 573. 
Marlborough, Duke of, early services, 
692 et seq. ; in the Netherlands, 694 ; 
restrained by Dutch deputies, 695 ; 
moves into Germany, 710 ; not an 
exceptional march, 711 ; meets Eu- 
gene, 712 ; operates with Prince 
Louis, 712, 713 ; assault on the Schel- 
lenberg, 714 et seq. ; devastates Ba- 
varia, 717 ; joins Eugene, 719 ; joint 
forces, 719 ; they decide on battle, 
723 ; his record as a general, 730, 
736 ; his plan to invade France, 746 ; 
retires from Moselle, 747 ; breaks 
through Dyle lines, 748 ; at Ramil- 
lies, 750 et seq.; operates against 

I Vendome, 769 ; manoeuvres against 
Vendome, 771 et seq.; marches on 
Oudenarde, 773 et seq. ; success of 
his strategy, 782 : desires to invade 
France, 782 ; held back, 783 ; at 
Lille, 785 et seq. ; relieves Brussels, 
791 ; opposes Villars in Flanders, 
793 ; reconnoitres, 794 ; and Eugene 
at Tournay, 795 ; and Eugene ad- 
vance on Mons, 796 ; turn Villars' 
line, 796 ; at Malplaquet, 799 et 
seq. ; his brilliant career at an end, 
808; compared with Eugene, 809; 
at Douay, 818 et seq. ; advances with 
Eugene on Arras, 820; with Eu- 
gene captures Bethune, St. Venant 
and Aire, 820, 821 ; invests and takes 
Bouchain, 822 ; influences Charles 
XII., 841. 

Marsaglia, battle of, 666. 

Marsin, 479 et seq., 705, 707, 721 ; at 
Blenheim, 725 et seq., 760. 

Marston Moor, 425. 

Maurice of Nassau, his improvements. 
21, 34. 

Maximilian, 90 ; made elector, 98 ; his 
ideal, 113; rewarded, 114; 302, 310; 
retires from Rain, 317; appeals to 
Wallenstein, 319 ; retires to Ratis- 
bon, 320; afraid of Wallenstein, 
330 ; starts to join Wallenstein, 332 ; 
joins Wallenstein, 342. 

Mazarin, 445, 519, 527 et seq., 530. 

Mazeppa, 844 et seq. 

Mecklenburg, 172 ; dukes reinstated, 
236. 

Melos, Field-Marshal, 451. 

Mercenary, favored, 8; dangers of, 



860 



INDEX. 



Mercy, Field-Marshal, 447, 458, 460 et 
seq., 470 et seq., 479 et seq. 

Mergentheim, operations at, 468 et seq. ; 
battle of, 473 et seq. 

Mewe, operation at, 123 et seq. 

Monroe, 166, 182. 

Mons, besieged by Marlborough and 
Eugene, 797. 

Montecuculi, 175, 324, 509, 589 ; early 
life and services, 592, 593 ; moves 
on the Main, 593 ; evades Turenne, 
596 ; crosses Main, 597 ; joins Prince 
of Orange, 600 ; marches on Rhine, 
633 et seq.; moves on Philipsburg, 
636 ; crosses Rhine, 637 ; recrosses, 
637 ; moves back of Rench, 639 ; 
turned out of his position, 641, 645. 

Morgarten, horsemen destroyed at, 6 ; 
Swiss victory at, 11, 12. 

Morner, 68. 

Mortar, 9, 44. 

Munich, 321, 331. 

Musketeer, appears, 20 ; how armed, 
35 ; position in line, 50. 

Narva, battle of, 835 et seq. ; losses at, 

836. 
Naseby, battle of, 428 et seq. 
Naumburg, 379. 
Navy, Swedish, 62. 
Neerwinden, battle of, 663. 
Netherlands, develop engineering, 26. 
Nidda, operation on, 499 et seq. 
Non-combatants, 60. 
Nordlingen, 412 et seq. ; battle of, 417 

et seq., 475 et seq. 
Niirnberg,293, 297, 298, 336 et seq. ;its 

defenses, 339, 340 ; its troops, 340 ; 

small operations near, 346 et seq. ; 

famine begins, 347 ; forces in and 

about, 354 ; famine grows, 354 ; 

famine in, 360, 377 ; relieved, 362. 
Nymwegen, peace of, 643. 

Orange, William of, made stadtholder, 
587; inundates Holland, 588; joins 
Montecuculi, 600 ; at Senef , 603 et 
seq., 660, 663, 667, 670. 

Organization, uncertainty as to, 51. 

Orleans, duke of, 760 ; manoeuvres in 
front of Eugene, 762, 813. 

Ormond, Lord, commands English on 
the defensive, 823. 

Oudenarde, battle of, 775 et seq. ; Bur- 
gundy hesitates, 776 ; Vendome de- 
sires to attack, 776 ; Cadogan seizes 
Eyne, 776 ; French right attacks too 
late, 777 ; Eugene and Marlborough 
throw back attack, 779; Marlbor- 



ough sends Overkirk to turn French 
right, 779; Marlborough and Eu- 
gene envelop enemy, 780 ; French 
defeated, 781 ; losses, 781 ; Marl- 
borough pursues next day, 781. 

Outpost service, 575. 

Overkirk, 695, 747. 

Oxenstiern, Axel, 68 ; prime minister, 
73; 127, 152, 159, 166, 169, 178; 
advises march on Vienna, 276 ; 281, 
308, 323, 348, 352, 361, 366, 367, 
375, 377, 413, 439. 

Palatinate, devastation of, 616 ; suc- 
cession war, 644 et seq. 

Pappenheim defeats Lauenburg, 183, 
196 ; blockades Magdeburg, 197, 
209; attacks Magdeburg, 223; his 
activity at Magdeburg, 225 et seq. ; ' 
storms Magdeburg, 227 ; retires from 
Elbe, 239; at Breitenfeld, 260 et 
seq. ; separates from Tilly, 288 ; in 
"Westphalia, 296, 367-369 et seq.; 
marches towards Wallenstein, 375, 
378; sent to Halle, 381; ordered 
back, 384 ; killed, 395. 

Pasewalk, 169. 

Passau, convention of, 89. 

Pay, of troops, 55, 56. 

Peterborough, Lord, 811. 

Peter the Great, his character, 832; 
besieges Narva, 834 ; invades Poland, 
842 ; retires before Charles, 843 ; 
buys peace at Pruth, 847. 

Philipsburg captured, 465. 

Piccolomini, 345, 392, 414, 495, 511, 512. 

Pike, Swiss, 10. 

Pikeman, Swiss, 11-13 ; how armed, 
35 ; position in line, 50. 

Plunder, main object, 7. 

Poitiers, 15. 

Pomerania, 161 et seq. 

Portieus, 60. 

Prayer, 58. 

Preston Pans, 430. 

Priests' Alley, 280 et seq. 

Prisoners, ill-treated, 25, 60. 

Protestantism, its extent in 17th cen- 
tury, 89 ; proscribed, 115. 

Protestant Union, 91. 

Pultowa, battle of, 845 et seq. 

Pultusk, 839. 

Punishments, in Swedish army, 58. 

Pursuit, rare, 24, 575 ; 31. 

Quarters, 57. 

Rain, 314. 

Ramillies, positions at, 751, 752 ; Marl- 



INDEX. 



861 



borough advances on, 753 ; feints on 
Villeroi's left, 753 ; attacks Villeroi's 
right, 754 ; breaks it, 755 ; Villeroi 
retires, 755 ; losses at, 756 ; results 
of, 756 ; Villeroi relieved, 756. 

Rank and command begins, 24. 

Ransoms arise, 25, 60. 

Rations, how supplied, 25, 57. 

Ratisbon, 178. 

Reconnoitring, rare, 7. 

Regiment, size of, 3S ; officers of, 38. 

Regulations, Swedish, 58. 

Reserves, found useful, 54. 

Rewards, 60. 

Rhenskjold, General, 836, 841, 842, 
845, 846. 

Rhinegrave, the, 135, 137, 138. 

Ribnitz, 175. 

Richelieu, Cardinal, 115, 140, 148,195, 
275, 302, 323, 326; takes up the 
reins, 412 ; 439. 

Riga, siege of, 82, 83. 

Rocroy, battle of, 451 et seq.; losses 
at, 457. 

Rohan, duke of, 514. 

Rosen, General, 470 et seq., 505. 

Rostock, 173, 176, 236, 297. 

Rupert, Prince, 421 ; at Edgehill, 423 ; 
at Marston Moor, 426; at Naseby, 
428. 

Ryswick, Peace of, 667. 

Sapieha, 118. 

Savelli, 161, 169, 180, 203, 204. 

Schaumberg, 181, 187, 189, 203. 

Scheldt, fortified by French, 790 ; al- 
lies break through, 791. 

Schellenberg, assault on the, 714; 
losses at, 716 ; not justifiable, 716. 

Schools in Swedish army, 59. 

Schulemberg, General, 801 et seq. 

Schulenburg, General, 837, 841. 

Sehweinfurt, 284. 

Senef , battle of, 602 et seq. ; losses at, 
606. 

Sieges, arose from feudal castles, 8 ; 
method of, 8 ; 26, 61; advanced, 578 ; 
course of, 579. 

Sigismund, King, 65 ; deposed, 69 ; 
plots against Sweden, 79 ; truce with, 
79 ; at Danzig, 84 ; his reasons for 
war, 85 ; appears near Danzig, 122 ; 
weak conduct at Mewe. 124 ; im- 
placable, 193 ; agrees to six years' 
truce, 139. 

Silesia, Gustavus' plans as to, 213, 214. 

Sinsheim, battle of, 608 et seq. ; losses 
at, 608 et seq. 

Sirot, Marshal, 454. 



Skytte, John, 68, 159. 

Sobieski, John, 645 et seq. ; reaches 
Vienna, 650 ; attacks enemy, 651 ; 
behavior of emperor to, 654. 

Soldier of Fortune, 32. 

Spain, operations in, 810 et seq. ; allies 
take Madrid, 811 ; Berwick retakes 
Madrid, 812; Berwick defeats Gal- 
way at Almanza, 812 ; Stahremberg 
reaches, 813 ; defeats French near 
Saragossa, 814 ; marches on Ma- 
drid, 815 ; Vendome arrives, 815 ; 
Stahremberg retires from Madrid, 
815 ; Vendome beats him at Bri- 
huega, 815 ; Stahremberg retires to 
coast, 816. 

Spandau, 217, 235. 

Spanish succession, war of the, 670. 

Spanish sword and buckler, 14. 

Sparre, 346, 360. 

Spinola, 95-97. 

Squadron, organization and officers of, 
41. 

Stadtlohn, battle of, 99. 

Staffarda, battle of, 658. 

Stahremberg, at Vienna, 647 et seq. ; 
in Italy, 698 ; his splendid march, 
699 ; in Italy, 738 ; in Spain, 813 et 
seq. 

St. Antoine, battle of, 530. 

Steenkirke, battle of, 660 et seq. 

Sternskjold, 128. 

Stettin, 162 et seq., 176, 181. 

Stralsund, defies Wallenstein, 111 ; 
siege of, 112, 113 ; 174. 

Strategy, none in Middle Ages, 5 ; un- 
necessary to ancients, 30. 

Styrum, Marshal, 704. 

Swabia, overrun, 321 ; country people 
hostile, 321. 

Sweden, first to make National Army, 
31 ; her method, 32, 33 ; condition of, 
72 ; her wars, 72 ; condition of, in 
1630, 149 ; preparations in, 153. 

Swedish army, 47 et seq. ; recruitment 
of, 154 ; distribution of, 155 ; cost 
of, 155. 

Swedish peasantry, 66. 

Swedish soldier well clad, not uni- 
formed, 48 ; his national dress, 4'.i ; 
how clad and armed, 48 et seq ; well 
behaved, 78 ; what he learned in 
Polish wars, 142 ; how recruited, 
154 ; cost of, 155 ; how set up, 255 ; 
revels in Franconia, 298. 

Swiss pike, 10; tactics, 11, 12. 

Tactics, up to 16th century, 24 ; neces- 
sary to ancients, 30 ; minor for sol- 



862 



INDEX. 



diers, 39 ; old Spanish, 254 ; new 
Swedish, 255 ; of Breitenfeld, 254, 
255. 

Tallard, Field-Marshal, his bayonet 
charge, 706 ; 707, 717, 721 ; at Blen- 
heim, 725 et seq. 

Tangermiinde, 239. 

Taupadel, 346, 369. 

Teuffel, 165. 

Thirty Years' War, causes, 87; its 
motif, 88 ; phases, 88 ; beginning of, 
91 ; license in, 93, 97, 103, 116, 170, 
248 ; transferred to Weser, 98 ; Dan- 
ish period, 101; no method, 116; 
condition in 1630, 145 et seq. ; noted 
generals of, 274 ; how carried on 
after Gustavus' death, 413 et seq.; 
in 1633 and in following years, 414 ; 
French phase of, 438 et seq. 

Thiiringerwald, 283, 378. 

Thurn, Count, 92, 94. 

Tiefenbach, 247. 

Tilly, 95; victor at White Hill, 96; 
his campaign in Baden. 98 ; beats 
Mansfeld, 99, 105; follows Chris- 
tian, 108; beats Christian, 108; 
moves into Holstein, 109 ; 155, 178 ; 
in command, 196 ; at Frankfort and 
Landsberg, 199, 200 ; manoeuvres 
against Gustaviis, 203 et seq. ; aims 
at Neu-Brandenburg, 206, 207 ; cap- 
tures it, 208 ; marches on Magde- 
burg, 209 ; his method, 216 ; his pro- 
ceedings at Magdeburg, 225 et seq. ; 
his treachery at Magdeburg, 227 ; 
weak after Magdeburg, 232 ; moves 
on Hesse-Cassel, 233, 237 ; his char- 
acter, 233 ; his reinforcements, 233 ; 
returns to Elbe, 240 ; attacks Wer- 
ben camp, 241 ; defeated, 242 ; re- 
inforcements, 244 ; moves on Leipsic, 
248 ; captures Leipsic, 250 ; his in- 
tentions, 257, 258 ; defeated at Brei- 
tenfeld, 259 et seq. ; based on the 
Rhine, 276 ; after Breitenfeld, 286, 
287; moves south of Main, 288; 
Maximilian interferes with, 289 ; 
commendably active, 289 ; attacks 
Niirnberg, 293, 297 ; turns against 
Horn, 3U7 ; captures Bamberg, 308 ; 
retires, 309 ; his position on the Lech, 
312 ; resists Swedish passage, 316 ; 
wounded to death, 316. 

Tokoly, 647 et seq. 

Tollense, 168. 

Torstenson, Field - Marshal Leonard, 
82, 203, 396, 439. 

Tott, Ake, 236, 271, 281, 297, 306, 368, 
370. 



Tournay, siege of, by Marlborough and 
Eugene, 795. 

Train, 24 ; essential to transport war 
material, 31 ; decreased by Gusta- 
vus, 57 ; immense, 576. 

Traytor, 60. 

Triple Alliance, 583. 

Turenne, Marshal, his youth, 440 ; 
his early gallantry, 441 ; his early 
campaigns, 441 ; in Italy, 442 ; what 
he had learned, 443 : his lack of op- 
portunity, 444 ; an exceptional pat- 
tern, 444 ; his first army as field-mar- 
shal, 445 ; raid into Black Forest, 
446 ; moves on Freiburg, 447 ; fails 
at Freiburg, 449 ; reconnoitres with 
Conde\ 459 ; divides forces, 460 ; re- 
joins Conde',461 ; attacks again, 462 ; 
captures Philipsburg, 465 ; captures 
Mainz and other towns, 466 ; friend- 
ship for Conde\ 467 ; in winter-quar- 
ters, 469 ; crosses Rhine, 469 ; out- 
flanks enemy, 470 ; moves to Mer- 
gentheim, 471 ; defeated at Mergen- 
theim, 473 ; skillfully retires to 
Hesse, 474 ; frankly acknowledges 
defeat, 474 ; gets reinforcements and 
drives enemy back, 475 ; manoeu- 
vres against Mercy, 476 ; Turenne 
at Allerheim, 479 et seq. ; retires to 
Philipsburg, 485 ; captures Trier, 
486 ; hampered by Mazarin, 498, 
504 ; joins Wrangel, 498 ; turns en- 
emy on the Nidda, 499 ; moves into 
Swabia, 500 ; takes Rain, 501 ; turns 
enemy at Kirchheim, 502 ; invades 
Bavaria, 503 ; detaches Bavaria from 
emperor, 504 ; suppresses mutiny, 
505 ; defeats enemy at Zumarshau- 
sen, 508 ; moves on Rain, 510 ; crosses 
Lech, 510 ; crosses Isar, 511 ; reaches 
the Inn, 511 ; devastates Bavaria, 
511; retires behind Lech, 512; his 
conduct reviewed, 513 ; flies to Hol- 
land, 519 ; joins Spaniards and in- 
vades France, 521 ; his operations 
on the Aisne, 521, 522 ; defeated at 
Champ Blanc, 523 ; returns to France, 
524 ; commands army of the court, 
524 ; checks Conde - atGien, 525, 526 ; 
besieges Etampes, 526, 527 ; forces 
Lorraine out of France, 528 ; oper- 
ates near Paris, 529 et seq. ; at St. 
Antoine, 530 et seq. ; at Corbeil, 532, 
533 ; recaptures Paris, 533 ; on the 
Somme, 536 ; his manoeuvres against 
Conde\ 537, 538 ; compared to Conde*, 
539, 567 ; moves on Arras, 542 ; at- 
tacks the lines of Arras, 543, 545 ; 



INDEX. 



863 



manoeuvres Cond^ out of position on 
Scheldt, 546 et seq. ; his misunder- 
standing -with Conde\ 547 ; manoeu- 
vres on northern border of France, 
547, 548 ; besieges Valenciennes, 548 ; 
elasticity under defeat, 551 ; moves 
on Dunkirk, 554, 558 ; blockades 
Cambray, 554 ; takes St. Venant, 
556 ; and Mardyk, 557 ; attacks 
Cond^ and the Spaniards, 563 ; his 
victory at the Dunes, 564 ; cap- 
tures Dunkirk, 566 ; his capture of 
many towns, 567 ; overruns Flan- 
ders, 583 ; plans invasion of Holland, 
585 ; invades Holland, 586 ; operates 
against Great Elector and Montecu- 
culi, 590, 591; manoeuvres on Main 
against Montecuculi, 594 et seq. ; ad- 
vances towards Niirnberg, 596, 597 ; 
retires to Aschaffenburg, 599 ; at 
Sinsheim, 608 et seq.; manoeuvres 
on the Rhine, 615 et seq. ; at Entz- 
heim, 618 et seq. ; his letter to the 
king, 618 ; advances on Entzheim, 
619 ; attacks enemy, 620 ; conducts 
winter campaign, 626 et seq. ; his 
winter turning -manoeuvre, 627 et 
seq. ; attacks enemy, 628 et seq. ; 
wins victory at Tiirkheim, 630 et 
seq. ; drives enemy out of Alsatia, 
631 et seq. ; compared to other gen- 
erals, 632 ; manoeuvres against Mon- 
tecuculi on Rhine, 634 et seq. ; crosses 
Rhine, 635, 637 ; manoeuvres in front 
of Strasburg, 638 ; operations on 
Reneh, 639, 640 ; forces Montecuculi 
to battle, 641 ; estimate of his char- 
acter, 641, 642. 

Turin, battle of, 757 et seq. ; descrip- 
tion of, 763 ; French fight defensive 
battle, 764 ; Eugene ably selects 
points of attack, 765 ; beats the 
French, 766; discussion of battle, 
766 et seq. 

Tiirkheim operation, 627 et seq. ; bat- 
tle of, 630 et seq. 

Uniforms, 48 ; introduced, 571. 
Utrecht, Peace of, 828. 

Valenciennes, siege of, 549 et seq. 

Vasas, the, 63 et seq. 

Vauban, 578, 695, 784. 

Vendome, duke of, early services, 6S6 ; 
in Italy, 686 ; outflanks Eugene, 
687; crosses Po, 688; at Luzzara, 
689 ; compared to Eugene, 601 ; 
against Stahremberg, 698 ; in Italy, 
737 et seq.; checks Eugene on the 



Adda, 739 ; and at Casano, 741 ; 
great credit due him, 744 ; attacks 
Eugene's army, 759 ; in the Nether- 
lands, 770 et seq. ; manoeuvres against 
Marlborough, 771 et seq. ; seizes 
Ghent, 772 ; seeks to fight Marlbor- 
ough, 774 ; held back by Burgundy, 
775 ; manoeuvres before Bruges and 
Ostende, 790 ; in Spain, 815 et seq. 

Victories, indicisive, 31. 

Victualing, method of, 25, 57, 576. 

Vienna, a march on ? 276 ; the siege 
of, 645 et seq.; defenses of, 647; 
battle of, 652 ; losses at, 654. 

Villars, early services, 700 ; his foray 
in Baden, 701 ; operates with Ba- 
varia, 703 et seq. ; manoeuvres against 
Prince of Baden, 705 ; 746, 747 ; de- 
fends northern France, 793 ; his 
lines, 794 ; his lines turned, 796 ; ad- 
vances on Marlborough and Eugene, 
797 ; reaches Malplaquet, 798 ; for- 
tifies, 798 ; his numbers, 798 ; at 
Malplaquet, 799 et seq. ; cheeks Eu- 
gene and Marlborough in advance 
on Arras, 820 ; his strong lines, S20 ; 
captures Denain and breaks Eu- 
gene's position, 826 ; operates on 
Rhine, 828. 

Villeroi, 665 ; in Italy, 679 ; defeated 
at Chiari, 682 ; captured, 685, 717 ; 
captures Huy, 746 ; his lines on the 
Dyle, 748 ; broken through, 749 ; 
at Ramillies, 750 et seq. 

Walhof, battle of, 119. 

Wallenstein, his opinion of Gustavus, 
78, 130, 135, 144 ; 104 ; early history, 
105 ; his military method, 100 ; beats 
Mansfeld, 107 ; follows him, 107 ; 
moves into Jutland, 110 ; opposition 
to him, 110 ; his ideas, 110, 111; baf- 
fled at Stralsund, 113; his ideal. 
113 ; his success, 114 ; his failure be- 
fore Stralsund, 134 ; 155 ; displaced, 
179 ; indiscipline of his troops, IT'. 1 ; 
Tilly's failure, his gain, 274 : his 
approaches to Gustavus; 274, ill!'; 
321 et seq. ; his terms to emperor, 
327; placed in command, 3JK ; raises 
an army, 328 ; its indiscipline, 32S ; 
marches into Bohemia, 330; nego- 
tiates with John George, 330 ; moves 
to Eger, 330 ; plunders in Saxony, 
331 ; on Gustavus' communications. 
336 ; follows to Niirnberg, 340, 342 ; 
over-cautious, 341 ; declines to fight, 
343 ; his camp, 343 ; merely block- 
ades Niirnberg. 344 ; criticism on 



864 



INDEX. 



this, 344, 345 ; his officers, 345 ; his 
position, 345 ; does not attack Gus- 
tavus' reinforcements, 351 ; leth- 
argic, 352 ; refuses battle, 354 ; de- 
fends his position, 357 ; leaves Niirn- 
berg, 362 ; his letter to emperor, 362 ; 
moves on Saxony, 364 et seq.; dis- 
regards Gustavus' movements, 368 ; 
enters Saxony, 369 ; thrusts at Gus- 
tavus' weak point, 372 ; compared 
to Gustavus, 374 ; his general plan, 
374 ; attacks Leipsie, 375 ; his coun- 
cil of war, 382 ; inert, 382 ; his stra- 
tegic situation, 383 ; could have had 
better position at Liitzen, 390 ; re- 
treats to Bohemia, 396, 4l4 ; his last 
campaign weak, 415 ; assassinated, 
415. 

Werben camp, 239. 

Werth, John de, 473 et seq., 479 et seq. 

Westphalia, Peace of, 512, 517. 

White Hill, battle of, 96. 



William III., 659 ; at Steenkirke, 661 ; 

at Neerwinden, 663 ; 667, 670. 
William of Hesse, assists Gustavus, 

234, 246 ; defies Tilly, 234, 237 ; 282, 

287, 291, 302, 306, 369. 
William of Orange, 34. 
William of Weimar, 297, 323, 349, 

369 et seq. 
Wismar, 173, 236, 297. 
Women with army, 59. 
Woods, fighting in the, 472. 
Worcester, 434 et seq. 
Wrangel, Field-Marshal Gustavus, 82, 

135, 137, 153, 439, 440; operates 

with Turenne, 497 et seq. ; continues 

to operate with Turenne, 507 et seq. 
Wiirtemberg, 324. 
Wiirzburg, 285. 

Zenta campaign, 672 et seq. 
Zisca wagonburg, 16, 17. 
Zumarshausen, operation at, 508. 



LIST OF DATES. 



A. D. 

Battle of Adrianople 378 

Battle of Hastings ... 1066 

Battle of Falkirk 1298 

B.ittle of Binnockburn 1314 

Battle of Morgarten 1315 

Gunpowder introduced circa 1320 

Battle of Laupen 1339 

Battle of CrcSey 1346 

Battle of Poitiers 1356 

Battle of Rosabeck — Field artillery 1382 

Battle of Agincourt 1415 

Battle of Deutsch Brod — Zisoa 1422 

Gustavus I. Vasa, king of Sweden 1523 

Swedish National Army begun circa 1525 

Convention of Passau ». . . . 1552 

Peace of Augsburg 1555 

Eric XIV. king of Sweden 1560 

John III. king of Sweden 1568 

Sigismund, king of Sweden 1592 

Gustavus Adolphus born Dec. 19, 1594 

Charles IX. king of Sweden 1604 

Donau worth put to the ban 1607 

Protestant Union formed 1608 

Catholic League formed 1609 

Matthias seizes Bohemian throne 1611 

Gustavus' first campaign 161 1 

Gustavus ascends throne 1611 

Matthias elected emperor 1612 

Gustavus' Danish campaign 1612 

Peace of Knarbd 1613 

Gustavus begins army organization 1615 

Gustavus' Russian campaign 1615 

Peace of Stolbowa 1616 

Ferdinand elected king of Bohemia 1617 

Thirty Years' War begins 1618 

Ferdinand II. elected emperor 1619 

Frederick of the Palatinate elected king 

of Bohemia 1619 

Maximilian of Bavaria joins Ferdinand 1620 

Battle of the White Hill Nov. 8, 1020 

Gustavus travels in Germany 1619-1620 

Defeat of Radziwill — Polish War . . Aug. 1621 
Capture of Riga — Polish War . . Sept. 16, 1621 
Livonia captured — Polish War 

Sept. -Dec. 1621 

Palatinate reduced 1621 

Danzig agrees to neutrality June, 1622 

Tilly's manoeuvres in Baden 

May-June, 1622 
Mansfield and Brunswick defeated ou 

Weser Aug. 1623 

Christian of Denmark undertakes war. . 1625 

Treaty with Stralsund 1625 

Gustavus lands at the Dwina June, 1625 

Livonia reduced July-Aug. 1025 

Two battles at Riga Summer, 1625 

Courland reduced Fall, 1625 

Battle of Walhof Jan. 6, 1626 

Wallenstein defeats Mansfeld April, 1626 



Pillau taken by Gustavus June, 1626 

Kbnigsberg and Prussian towns taken 

July, 1626 

Siege of Danzig begins July, 1626 

Relief of Mewe by Gustavus Aug. 1626 

Battle of Lutter Aug. 27, 1626 

Swedish reverses Spring, 1627 

Gustavus arrives at Danzig May, 1627 

Gustavus twice wounded May-June, 1627 

Naval battle off Danzig Fall, 1627 

Storm of Wormditt Fall, 1627 

Baltic treaty with Denmark.. ..Winter, 1627 

Tilly invades Holstein 1627 

Wallenstein defeats Christian 1627 

Defeat of Koniezpolski Spring, 1628 

Wallenstein defeated at Stralsund 

July 24, 1628 

Peace of Liibeck May 22, 1629 

Edict of Restitution issued May 19, 1629 

Sweden determines on war Spring, 1629 

Operation at Stuhm June 27, 1629 

Victory at the Nogat July 16, 1629 

Truce of Stuhmsdorf Aug. 1629 

Preparations for war Winter, 1629-1630 

Leslie takes Rligen March and April, 1630 

Gustavus sets sail for Germany. .June 9, 1630 

Lands at Usedom July 4, 1030 

Takes Usedom and Wollin Jul}', 1030 

Takes Stettin July 20, 1630 

Siege of Colberg begins August, 1630 

Capture of coast towns 

July and August, 1630 

Savelli besieges Tollense August 28, 1630 

Magdeburg garrisoned August, 1030 

Advance on Mecklenburg Aug. -Sept. 1630 

Ribnitz taken by Gustavus Sept. 27, 1630 

Congress of Ratisbon ends Nov. 1630 

Tilly succeeds Wallenstein Nov. 1030 

Gustavus defeats Savelli at Demmin 

Nov. 1630 

Battle of Schievelbein Nov. 11, 1030 

Battle of Ratzburg Nov. 1030 

Capture of Garz Dec. 20, 1030 

Barwalde Camp Jan. and Feb. 1031 

Tilly reaches Frankfort Jan. 18, 1031 

Treaty with France Jan. 23, 1 031 

Demmin movement Jan. and Feb. 1031 

Capture of Demmin Feb. 15, 1031 

Capture of Colberg March 2, 1631 

Leipsic Convention.. ..Feb. and March, 1631 
Neu-Brandenburg massacre . . . March 23, 1631 

Ci'istrin surrenders March 31, 1631 

Storm of Frankfort April 3, 1631 

Landsberg falls April 16, 1631 

Siege of Magdeburg.. Sept. 1630, to May, 1631 
Pappenheim captures outer forts of city 

April 9, 1631 
Falkenberg retires within walls 

April 30, 1631 



LIST OF DATES. 



Suburbs burned May 4, 1631 

Storm and burning of Magdeburg 

May 20, 1631 

Tilly marches on Hesse-Cassel June, 1631 

Capture of Greifswalde June 25, 1631 

Dukes of Mecklenburg restored. .July 5, 1631 

Capture of Tangermiuide July 10, 1631 

Camp at Werben July- Aug. 1631 

Burgstall combat Aug. 1, 1631 

Tilly defeated at Werben Aug. 7, 1631 

Tilly retires Aug. 8, 1631 

Gustavus fortifies Havel-Spree line 

Aug. 1631 
Tilly moves on Hesse-Cassel... End Aug. 1631 

Tilly moves on Saxony Early Sept. 1631 

Gustavus' treaty with Saxony .. Sept. 10, 1631 

Armies join at Diiben Sept. 15, 1631 

Tilly captures Leipsic Sept. 16, 1631 

Battle of Breitenfeld Sept. 17, 1631 

Gustavus heads for Thuringia. .Sept. 27, 1631 

Gustavus at Erfurt Oct. 2, 1631 

March through Thiiringerwald . . Oct. 8, 1631 

Wiirzburg captured Oct. 15, 1631 

Marienburg captured Oct. 17, 1631 

Gustavus defeats duke of Lorraine 

Nov. 2, 1631 

Saxons move to Prague Early Nov. 1631 

Gustavus starts down the Main 

Nov. 10, 1631 

Frankfort surrenders Nov. 28, 1631 

Tilly attacks Niirnberg Dec. 4, 1631 

Mainz surrenders Dec. 22, 1631 

Winter-quarters in Mainz 

Dec. 1631, to March, 1632 

Wallenstein reappears Jan. 1632 

Wallenstein invades Bohemia Feb. 1632 

Tilly captures Bamberg End Feb. 1632 

Gustavus joins Horn March 15, 1632 

Gustavus enters Niirnberg March 31, 1632 

Gustavus takes Donauworth. . . .April 5, 1632 
Wallenstein definitely in command 

April, 1632 

The crossing of the Lech April 15, 1632 

Gustavus takes Augsburg April 20, 1632 

Gustavus moves on Ingolstadt 

April 29, 1632 
Siege of Ingolstadt 

End of April, beginning of May, 1632 

Gustavus takes Munich May 10, 1632 

Wallenstein takes Prague May 18, 1632 

Gustavus reduces Swabia and Bavaria 

May-June, 1632 

Gustavus starts north June 12, 1632 

Gustavus at Furth June IS, 1632 

Wallenstein and Maximilian join 

June 24, 1632 
Gustavus at Hersebruck 

June 17- July 1, 1632 

Gustavus reaches Niirnberg July 3, 1632 

Wallenstein reaches Niirnberg .. July 13, 1632 
Wallenstein fails in a surprise. .July 15, 1632 
Starving match at Niirnberg 

July-Aug. 1632 
Wallenstein captures Lichtenau 

Aug. 6, 1632 

Gustavus captures convoy Aug. 9, 1632 

Oxenstiern arrives with reinforcements 

Aug. 23, 1632 
Gustavus offers Wallenstein battle 

Aug. 31, 1632 
Gustavus attacks the Alte Veste 

Sept. 3, 1632 

Formal challenge to battle Sept. 17, 1632 

Gustavus leaves Niirnberg Sept. 19, 1632 

Wallenstein leaves Niirnberg. . . Sept. 21, 1632 



Gustavus on the Danube Early Oct. 1632 

Wallenstein starts for Saxony. . .Oct. 15, 1632 

Gustavus starts for Saxony Oct. 18, 1632 

Wallenstein takes Leipsic Nov. 2, 1632 

Gustavus at Erfurt Early Nov. 1632 

Gustavus crosse Saale Nov. 9, 1632 

Battle of Liitzen — Gustavus' death 

Nov. 16, 1632 

Bernard operates on the Danube 1633 

Horn operates in Swabia 1633 

Wallenstein operates on the Oder 1633 

Wallenstein assassinated Feb. 25, 1634 

Battle of Nordlingen Sept. 16, 1634 

Duke of Rohan in the Valteline. . . .1635-1637 
Bau6r and Bernard command Swedish 

army 1634-1641 

Torstenson commands Swedish army 

1641-1642 
Cromwell begins " Ironsides " discipline 

Winter, 1642 

Battle of Edgehill Oct. 23, 1642 

Battle of Grantham May, 1643 

Battle of Rocroy May 19, 1643 

Battle of Gainsborough July, 1643 

Battle of Winceby Oct. 1643 

Turenne takes command of French army 

Dec. 1643 

Turenne's raid into Swabia May, 1644 

Turenne's failure at Freiburg June, 1644 

Battle of Marston Moor July 2, 1644 

Battle of Freiburg Aug. 3-9, 1644 

Capture of Pliilipsburg Sept. 12, 1644 

Capture of Mainz and other places 

Sept.-Dec. 1644 

" New Model " army voted Feb. 1645 

Turenne crosses Rhine April, 1 645 

Battle of Mergentheim May 5, 1645 

Battle of Naseby. June 14, 1645 

Conde" joins French army July 5, 1645 

Battle of Allerheim Aug. 5, 1645 

Cromwell at Bristol Sept. 10-11, 1646 

Nidda operation June, 1646 

Memmingen operation Oct. 1646 

Conde at Dunkirk Sept.-Oct. 1646 

Cromwell at Basing House Oct. 14, 1646 

Bavaria deserts Ferdinand March, 1647 

Conde" in Catalonia 1647 

Zumarshausen operation May, 1648 

Conde" takes Ypres May, 1648 

Turenne on the Inn July, 1648 

Battle of Preston Pans Aug. 1648 

Battle of Lens Fall, 1648 

Peace of Westphalia Oct. 24, 1648 

Capture of Drogheda Sept. 12, 1649 

Wexford and Clonmell Winter, 1649 

Battle of Dunbar Sept. 3, 1650 

Conde" imprisoned by Mazarin 1650 

Turenne invades France 1650 

Battle of Champ Blanc Dec. 1650 

Battle of Worcester Sept. 3, 1651 

Turenne arrayed against Conde" 1652 

Ble"neau affair March, 1652 

Siege of Etampes Spring, 1652 

Battle of St. Antoine July 5, 1652 

Turenne protects the court 

Summer and Fall, 1652 
Operation at Villeneuve St. Georges 

Oct. 1652 

Campaign on the Somme Summer, 1653 

Relief of Arras by Turenne Aug. 24, 1654 

Relief of Valenciennes by Conde" 

July 16, 1656 

Campaign on border of Holland 1657 

Turenne takes Dunkirk 

May and June, 165S 



LIST OF DATES. 



Battle of the Dunes June 14, 

Capture of Bergen June 29, 

Peace of the Pyrenees 

Triple Alliance Jan. 

Peace of Aachen May, 

French invade Holland Spring, 

William of Orange placed in command 

Aug. 
Turenne operates against Great Elector 

and Mont.ecuculi Fall, 

Turenne and Montecuculi on the Main 
Summer, 

Battle of Sinsheim June 16, 

Battle of Senef Aug. 11, 

Battle of Entzheim Oct. 4, 

Turenne's turning manoeuvre 

Nov .-Dec. 

Battle of Turkheim Jan. 5, 

Turenne's last campaign June-July, 

Turenne's death July 26, 

Peace of Nymwegen 

Relief of Vienna by Sobieski. . .Sept. 12, 

Battle of Fleurus June 30, 

Battle of the Boyne July 1, 

Battle of Cape La Hogue May, 

Battle of Steenkirk July 24, 

Battle of Neerwinden July 29, 

Battle of Marsaglia Oct. 4, 

Peace of Ryswick Sept. 30, 

Charles XII. invades Zeeland June, 

Peter the Great at Narva Oct. 

Battle of Narva Nov. 29, 

Eugene and Catinat in Italy 

April-May, 

Battle of Riga July, 

Charles XII. overruns Courland and 

Lithuania 

Marlborough commander-in-chief in Hol- 
land 

Eugene against Villeroi and Vendome in 

Italy 

Operation of Mantua May, 

Charles XII. captures Warsaw May, 

Battle of Klissow July, 

Battle of Luzzara Aug. 3, 

Marlborough in Holland 

Vendome against Stahremberg in Italy 

Villars' Baden raid Feb. 

Battle of Pultusk May, 

Peter founds St. Petersburg 

Villars' manoeuvres against Louis of 

Baden Summer and Fall, 

Marlborough and Eugene on the Danube 



A. D. A. D. 

, 1658 War in Spain begins — Gibraltar taken 1704 

1658 Assault on the Schellenberg July 2, 1704 

1659 Battle of Blenheim Aug. 13, 1704 

1668 Peter takes Narva 1704 

1668 Stanislaus Lesczinski elected king of Po- 

1672 laud 1704 

Augustus recaptures Warsaw Sept. 1704 

1672 Schulemberg defeated at Punitz 1704 

Schulemberg's famous retreat 1704 

1672 Eugene and Vendome in Italy 1705 

Archduke Charles in Spain 1705 

1673 Marlborough on the Moselle and in Hol- 

1674 land 1705 

1674 Battle of Frauenstadt Feb. 1706 

1674 Battle of Ramillies May 23, 1706 

Galway takes Madrid June, 1706 

1674 Battle of Turin Sept. 7, 1706 

1675 I Charles XII. invades Saxony 1706 

1675 Charles XII. dictates peace at Leipsic. 1706 

1675 j Marlborough in Holland 1707 ' 

1679 | Eugene at Toulon 1707 

1683 Battle of Almanza Spring, 1707 

1690 Allies forced back to Catalouia Fall, 1707 

1690 i Charles XII. returns to Poland. . . .Sept. 1707 
1692 Charles XII. at Grodno Jan. 1708 

1692 Charles XII. at the Beresina June, 1708 

1693 Battle of Oundenarde July 11, 1708 

1695 SiegeofLille ....Oct. 1708 

1697 Charles XII. marches to the Ukraine 

1700 Fall, 1708 

1700 Fortress War 1708-1709 

1700 Villars' lines Spring, 1709 

Siege of Poltowa May, 1709 

1701 Battle of Poltowa July 8, 1709 

1701 Siege of Tournay July, 1709 

Advance on Mons Sept. 4, 1709 

Battle of Malplacquet Sept. 11, 1709 

Siege of Douay Spring, 1710 

1702 Stahremberg and Vendome in Spain 1710 

Siege of Bethune July, 1710 

1702 Siege of Aire and St. Venant 1710 

1702 Capture of Bouchain 1711 

1702 Peter buys peace on the Pruth 1711 

1702 : English on the defensive 1712 

1702 ; Siege of Quesnoy by Eugene ... Summer, 1712 

1703 Siege of Landrecies by Eugene 
1703 | Summer, 1712 
1703 Villars raises siege of Landrecies 
1703 July 24, 1712 
1703 Villars and Eugene on the Rhine 1713 

; Charles XII. returns to Sweden 1714 

1703 Victory of Belgrade 1717 

1704 Death of Charles XII 1718 



GREAT CAPTAINS. 

A COURSE OF SIX LECTURES 

Shoiving the Influence on the Art of War of the Campaigns of 
Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Fred- 
erick, and Napoleon. 8vo, 219 pp., $2.00. 

By THEODORE AYKAULT DODGE, 

Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel United States Army. 



These Lectures were delivered before the Lowell Institute in Boston. 



The conciseness and sharpness of these pictures make them very effec- 
tive, and we know not where else to find in anything like the same compass 
accounts of the eminent commanders here considered which convey an 
equally complete and intelligible conception of them. — N. Y. Tribune. 

They (the great captains) become as real to the reader as if Plutarch 
were his guide instead of an American veteran. In producing this effect 
the book is almost alone among modern historical studies. — Boston Herald. 

The best informed can hardly rise from a perusal of his pages without a 
sense of having gained wonderfully in the clearness of his vision of facts 
with which he has perhaps long been familiar. — Boston Advertiser. 

The book is delightful reading for laymen ; at the same time no officer 
can study it without getting a clearer insight into the higher branches of his 
profession. — London Graphic. 

Instead of long-drawn commentaries, he interjects pithy remarks and crit- 
icisms which at times approach the epigrammatic. — United Service Maga- 
zine. 

A most entertaining and instructive description of the character, life, and 
work of the six great captains of history. — Journal Military Service Insti- 
tution. 



ALEXANDER. 

A History of the Origin and Growth of the Art of War, from the 
Earliest Times to the Battle of Ipsus, B. c. 301 ; with a detailed 
account of the Campaigns of the Great Macedonian. With 237 
Charts, Maps, Plans of Battles and Tactical Manoeuvres, Cuts of 
Armor, Uniforms, Siege Devices, and Portraits. 8vo, two volumes 
in one, pp. xxiv, 692, $5.00. 

By THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE, 

Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel United States Army. 



Colonel Dodge has made it clear in this well-written book that there was 
loom for at least one more study of the great Macedonian, and that new 
light could he thrown upon his achievements by examining them from a 
military point of view. The observations of Colonel Dodge on many points 
of military science are pregnant and weighty. — N. Y. Tribune. 

Colonel Dodge points out with great skill what Alexander was as a great 
captain, and what he did for the art of war. This book is of the deepest 
interest to those who wish to fully comprehend how Alexander conquered 
the world. — Boston Herald. 

We cannot name an author who can desciibe a battle so clearly and sim- 
ply, make the object of manoeuvres so plain, the reason of defeat or victory 
so clearly understood. — Boston Advertiser. 

He has certainly made the story more intelligible than did his less mili- 
tary predecessors, not only by his admirable and abundant maps and plans, 
but by the clear and careful narration of the military transactions. — Phila- 
delphia American. 

Colonel Dodge follows Alexander with critical analysis, and in a style 
specially suited to the needs of the modern reader. — Dial (Chicago). 

A book of much interest to the ordinary reader from the freshness of its 
matter . . . which invites perusal from the outset. — Christian Union (New 
York). 

It is the first work which has treated the subject in such perfect detail 
and with such a profusion of aids to the reader in the way of maps and 
illustrations. — Boston Transcript. 

American scholarship has reason to be proud of this successful inaugura- 
tion of Colonel Dodge's great undertaking. — Chicago Evening Journal. 

The author's work, modest, clear, entertaining, and full of information, 
deserves cordial recognition from scholars and warm praise from critics. — 
Hartford Couranl. 

Creditable to the unfaltering industry as well as to the sagacity of its 
accomplished author. — Boston Beacon. 

The style, which is clear and interesting, flows on with a certain vividness 
which carries one along with it to the very last page without weariness or 
disappointment. — N. Y. Critic. 

Nothing apparently has escaped his research in ancient records or mod- 
ern travel. — Christian Register. 

Colonel Dodge writes out of so fresh an interest in his subject that he is 
sure to find interested readers. — Atlantic Monthly. 

Colonel Dodge has the excellent faculty of making things clear in no 
mean degree. — London Saturday Review. 



A work of immense research, and labor and prepared with unusual intel- 
ligence and ability. — Brooklyn Standard-Union. 

The book represents an amount of research and labor really enormous. — 
Boston Courier. 

The author's accounts of Alexander's campaigns are vivid, picturesque, 
and entertaining. — Book Buyer. 

In every respect creditable to the industry and scholarship of the author. 
— Magazine of American History. 

A conspicuous feature of the book is the historian's perfect fairness. — ■ 
Public Opinion. 

It is plain, clear history, with frequent pithy criticisms. — Liter-Ocean. 

A remarkably interesting as well as valuable book. — Providence Journal. 

A well-digested and admirably classified work. — Philadelphia Ledger. 

The clearest tale of military history we have ever read. — American 
Grocer. 

The book is interesting on every page. — Journal of Mil. Service Inst. 

Vivid, picturesque, and entertaining. — Minneapolis Tribune. 



HANNIBAL. 

A History of the Art of War among the Carthaginians and Romans, 
down to the Battle of Pydna, 168 B. c. ; with a detailed account 
of the Second Punic War. With 227 Charts, Maps, Plans of Bat- 
tles and Tactical Manoeuvres, Cuts of Armor, Weapons, and Uni- 
forms. 8vo, two volumes in one, pp. xviii, 684, $5.00. 

By THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE, 

Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel United States Army. 



Especial praise is due to the chapter on crossing the Alps . . . and to the 
general summing up of Hannibal's character and career. . . . They com- 
mend themselves to the critic from the first word to the last. — London 
Athenaum. 

Having once begun, the reader does not wish to lay down the volume 
until he closes the cover on the last page. — Journal of Mil. Service Inst. 

The result of exhaustive research and enthusiastic interest in the subject. 
— N. Y. Critic. 

Colonel Dodge marshals the evidence . . . and fills out the story with 
whatever authentic material has survived, and thus gives local color and in- 
creased interest to the whole. — N. Y. Nation. 

Colonel Dodge has brought to his task a very thorough preparation and 
equipment. . . . The accounts of Hannibal's battles and sieges and marches 
are clear and spirited. — N. Y. Tribune. 

The book is an example of how life can be infused into apparently ex- 
hausted classical themes by fresh study and vigorous presentation. — Prov- 
idence Journal. 

Colonel Dodge's views are carefully considered and his opinions are pre- 
sented with clearness and force. — N. Y. Journal. 

Although a careful historian, the author is also a graceful and forcible 
writer, with the true soldier's facultv of expressing himself conciselv. — 
N. Y. Herald. 



J 



An interesting feature is the diligence with which Colonel Dodge has col- 
lected all the anecdotes likely to throw light on Hannihal's personal char- 
acter. — Philadelphia Book News. 

So clear that the reader who knows little about military matters finds 
himself carried forward insensibly, and deeply absorbed. — Boston Courier. 

An invaluable addition to the history of Rome. It settles many vexed 
questions, and sheds light on many obscure problems. — Dial. 

Colonel Dodge can tell a story with spirit, and he has a sound conception 
of the value of evidence. — London Saturday Review. 

Certain qualities of merit are plainly evidenced, — patient and careful 
investigation of the authorities, and a balance of judgment as to conflicting 
statements. — Christian Union. 

The style is strong and vigorous, often epigrammatical . . . the work in- 
dicates care and research. — Christian Register. 

The biographer is gifted with lively powers of conception and execution. 
Hannibal is a superb piece of portraiture. — Philadelphia Ledger. 

A volume substantially new in its study of this master in the art of war. 
— Army and Navy Journal. 

The most masterful history of the art of war among the Carthaginians 
and Romans . . . that has yet commanded the exertions of any writer. — 
Brooklyn Times. 

Vigorous and precise without being overloaded with irrelevant detail. — 
Boston Gazette. 

It is as if you were a looker-on while Hannibal is maintaining himself in 
a hostile country. — Boston Herald. 

No romance can be more fascinating than this remarkable biography. — 
Boston Transcript. 

The story is told with admirable clearness and directness. — Hartford 
Courant. 

The author has gone to work in the true way of investigation. — Chicago 
Journal. 

It repays over and over again a careful perusal. — American Grocer. 

A clearer and better account than can be found elsewhere. — U. S. Cav- 
alry Association Journal. 

The author is particularly fitted to his task. — San Francisco Weekly. 

The author is entitled to special attention. — St. Louis Republican. 

The author shows himself an impartial judge. — Springfield Republican. 

Colonel Dodge is an acute critic. — Boston Beacon. 

The outcome of careful and exhaustive study. — N. Y. Sun. 

A trustworthy and spirited history. — Philadelphia Press. 



CAESAR. 



A History of the Art of War among the Romans, from the Second 
Punic War down to the Fall of the Roman Empire ; with a de- 
tailed account of the Gallic and Civil Wars. With 275 Charts, 
Maps, Plans of Battles and Tactical Manoeuvres, and other Cuts. 
8vo, two volumes in one, pp. xix, 792, $5.00. 

By THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE, 

Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel United States Army. 

The thorough knowledge of his subject shown by the author, the forcible 
and interesting manner in which he presents his array of facts, and above 
all his evident indefatigability as a worker, cannot fail to excite the admi- 
ration of his readers. — N. Y. Critic. 



The distinguishing characteristic of this excellent series is the extraordi- 
nary care the aiithor has taken to make each volume approximately, as 
nearly as is permitted to fallible humanity, the standard of absolute accu- 
racy. — Public Opinion. 

One charm of Colonel Dodge's Great Captains Series is the absolute frank- 
ness with which he makes known his estimates of the campaigns and the 
character of his heroes. — N. Y. Times. 

The portrait of Caesar has often been drawn, but Colonel Dodge has repro- 
duced it in singularly lifelike lines and colors. — N. Y. Sun. 

The work will add to Colonol Dodge's reputation as a clear and on the 
whole unprejudiced writer concerning topics which appear to possess pecul- 
iar difficulties. — N. Y. Independent. 

The work is a monument of patient labor, and so clear in style and free 
from technicalities as to make it a popular work. — American Grocer. 

Colonel Dodge's Great Captains, when complete, will be an enduring mon- 
ument of conscientious study and industry. — Magazine of American History. 

Again Ave have to praise the author's unwearied perseverance in tramping 
over sites of battles. — London Athenozum. 

Richness of resource, vividness of portraiture, and candid impartiality 
lend to this work a fascination which holds a sustained interest. — Minn. 
Tribune. 

The author has added to his reputation as a military historian in the 
present work. — Brooklyn Eagle. 

It is as if we were with Caesar himself and looked on as a disinterested 
observer. — Boston Herald. 

Colonel Dodge's series . . . has already taken established rank among 
English histories of ancient wars. — N. Y. Nation. 

Colonel Dodge has given facts in which the ordinary scholar and reader 
will find unusual pleasure. — iV. Y. Herald. 

A model of clear description and critical military analysis. — Boston 
Transcript. 

A wonderful amount of careful, painstaking research. — Boston Adver- 
tiser. 

We commend the whole series, judging the volumes to come by those we 
have, to all students. — Dial (Chicago). 

Colonel Dodge convinces us that he understands the business of war. — 
London Saturday Review. 

The military student owes a debt of gratitude to Colonel Dodge. — Mili- 
itary Service Inst. Journal. 

All students of the subject will want to possess the volume. — Hartford 
Courant. 

No little point escapes the Argus eyes of the historian. — Philadelphia 
Ledger. 

Colonel Dodge is well fitted to give freshness to the old story. — A. V. 
Evening Post. 

A vivid picture of the great game of war. — Providence Journal. 

Colonel Dodge has certainly fulfilled all expectations. — N. Y. Herald. 

A historian of broad views and logical opinions. — Boston Beacon. 

Singular clearness and accuracy. — Boston Courier. 

One of the most profoundly interesting of books. — Philadelphia Press. 

His criticisms are most valuable. — Boston Traveler. 



RIDERS OF MANY LANDS. 

Profusely illustrated by Remington, and from photographs of Oriental 
subjects. 8vo, pp. 486, $4.00. 

By THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE, 

Brevet Lieutenant- Colonel United States Army. 



A book that will gladden the heart of every lover of horses. — Boston 
Herald. 

A volume of rare and exceptional interest, full of information, modestly 
and diffidently conveyed, written hy a man who is not only a past master 
of his subject, but who shows in every line that he is possessed of that fine 
feeling' — that sacred fire — which alone can create perfect sympathy be- 
tween a high-bred gentleman and his equine counterpart. — N. Y. Tribune. 

The reader who has a grain of humor in him no bigger than a pinch < 
snuff will find endless entertainment in it. — N. Y. Evening Post. 

His style is picturesque and breezy ; he has opinions and he does not 
hesitate to express them. — Boston Advertiser. 

Every style of riding which deserves to be called a style is sympathet- 
ically estimated. — Boston Traveler. 

It is intensely readable, and it contains a variety of information with 
regard to horsemanship and the horse which could not possibly be found 
elsewhere. — Boston Beacon. 

Colonel Dodge is more than an enthusiastic lover of dogs and horses ; he 
is a most genial and clever writer. — Portland Press- 

It is fortunate that so fair-minded and cosmopolitan a critic of equitation 
has arisen as Colonel Dodge. — Springfield Republican. 

To an unlimited knowledge of the horse and the art of horsemanship the 
author adds vast experience as a traveler. — New Haven Register. 

What Colonel Dodge does not know about horses and how to ride them 
could be put in very few words. — Providence Journal. 

It is one of those delightful books in a conventional world which comes 
upon us not once in a decade. — N. Y. Nation. 

It is a book which all who love horses or the fields and the open air will 
take up with delight. — N. Y. Independent. 

The writer passes in review the riders, horses, and the methods and equip- 
ments of about every people under the sun, chatting with the charm of an 
accomplished raconteur. — Commercial Advertiser. 

Riders are discussed with the science of one who knows everything about 
a horse that is worth knowing. — Philadelphia Item. 

Colonel Dodge has studied riders from the saddle, and has observed 
things, women, customs, and costumes. — Detroit Free Press. 

Colonel Dodge's claim to know something about horses is amply and 
pleasantly maintained in nearly fourscore delightfully written chapters. — 
New Orleans Times-Democrat. 

Readers will insist on finding out for themselves the good things in this 
excellent work. — Boston Herald. 

A charming volume it is with its lively text, full of interest and anecdote. 
■ — Army and Navy Journal. 

Colonel Dodge's latest work is of distinct military value. — Journal Mil- 
itary Service Inst. 



A series of charmingly written chapters, in a breezy, unconventional style. 

— Boston Transcript. 

A delightful feature of Colonel Dodge's book is its sympathetic tone. — 
Boston Courier. 

A book every one interested in equitation will desire to possess. — Boston 
Gazette. 

His observations on horses and men in many lands are sensible, intelligent, 
and bright. — Portland Argus. 

He writes with an energy that carries his readers with him. — N. Y. Mail 
and Express. 

Marked in every paragraph with the knowledge of the specialist. — Out- 
look. 

A book that will gladden the heart of every lover of horses. — Brooklyn 
Times. 

Colonel Dodge is an adept whose knowledge of horseflesh is both wide 
and deep. — Philadelphia North American. 

It will appeal strongly and favorably to every lover of a manly spirit. — 
Philadelphia Press. 

Opinions that are heartily outspoken ; a breezy, broad-chested way of 
saying things. — Philadelphia Record. 

A charm of sprightliness which holds the reader's attention throughout. 

— Philadelphia Bulletin. 

Every horse lover will delight in Colonel Dodge's intelligent and sympa- 
thetic demonstration of his subject. — Philadelphia Telegraph. 

If ever a man was qualified to write of horses and riders it is Colonel 
Dodge. — Washington Star. 

Nothing bearing on the equestrianism of the various peoples has escaped 
his notice. — Bochester Herald. 

What the colonel does not know about the horse and his gaits is not 
worth knowing. — Buffalo Commercial. 

The discourse is easy and free from cant or technicality. — Christian 
Advocate. 

Vivid glances of life with opinions that are heartily outspoken. — Louis- 
ville Courier-Journal. 

The most magnificent tribute ever paid to the combined horse. — Gen. 
Castlejian, President Society of Saddle-Horse Breeders. 

Combines to an unusual degree interest, use, and beauty. — Chicago Times. 

Sound horse lore is dispensed all through the book. — Boston Common- 
wealth. 

He writes of a subject of which he is easily master. — Boston Commercial 
Bulletin. 

Marked by the enthusiasm of a genuine horseman. — Boston Journal. 

Will delight those who love a good anecdote or a good horse. — Zion's 
Herald. 

Contains a vast amount of curious information. — Portland Advertiser. 
Both instructive and extremely entertaining. — Hartford Courant. 

The collection is one of rare value and most entertaining quality. — Book 
Buyer. 

An exceptionally attractive book. — N. Y. Critic. 

A delightful and most instructive book. — iV. Y. Press. 
_ Bright, chatty, sparkling, and abounding in sage observations. — Chris- 
tian Intelligencer. 

A volume of surpassing interest. — N. Y. Rider and Driver. 



Colonel Dodge writes ex cathedra. — Episcopal Recorder. 

Colonel Dodge is a judge of horseflesh. A hreezy and outspoken book. — ■ 
Philadelphia Ledger. 

Lots of entertainment. — Philadelphia Times. 

A breezy, off-hand way quite refreshing. — Presbyterian. 

Colonel Dodge has studied the horse and horseman everywhere. — Albany 
Journal. 

One of the choicest holiday books of the year. — Buffalo Courier. 

Full of interest. — Toledo Blade. 

Colonel Dodge's style is easy and vivid. — Cincinnati Commercial Gazette. 

Colonel Dodge is thoroughly qualified to speak from experience. — Cleve- 
land Plain Dealer. 

One of the most entertaining books of the day. — Louisville Post. 

Abounding in anecdote and comment. — Chicago Journal. 

Will not only entertain but instruct equestrians. — Inter-Ocean. 

Colonel Dodge is master of his theme. — Dial. 

A feast of reason and a flow of soul. — Chicago Interior. 

His style is animated, his pen graphic, and his knowledge of the subject 
infinite. — Chicago Saturday Evening Herald. 

From Russia to Africa, from Japan to Westchester County. — New Or- 
leans Picayune. 

An authority which it is safe to follow. — San Francisco Bulletin. 

An expert judge of horseflesh. — San Francisco Post. 

Leaves no part of the world untouched. — San Francisco News Dealer. 

Colonel Dodge clearly speaks as one having authority on horses, saddles, 
months, and manners. — Breeders'' Gazette. 

ENGLISH NOTICES. 

Colonel Dodge writes with wide knowledge, keen sympathy, and trained 
judgment. — London Times. 

One of the best books on horses and their riders with which we have met. 
— London Athenceum. 

Colonel Dodge is an exceedingly agreeable companion. — London Satur- 
day Review. 

I am inclined to think no living man is a more profound authority. — 
Sporting and Dramatic News. 

The book displays a knowledge of the ever-fascinating subject which is 
nothing less than bewildering. — London Sketch. 

Very well done. — London World. 



By the Same Author. 



THE 

CAMPAIGN OF CHANCELLORSVILLE 

With four large Maps. 8vo. $3.00 

It is not easy to say which part of this book is best, for it is all good. — The 
Nation. 

We do not hesitate to pronounce it one of the ablest, fairest, and most valuable 
books that we have ever seen. — Southern Historical Papers. 



A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF OUR 
CIVIL WAR 

"With four large Maps and forty-one Battle-Charts 
8vo. $3.00 

It is all that could be desired; gives perhaps a clearer, more vivid view, a more 
accurate outline, than any other available record. — Londoti Saturday Review. 

The book is written in a spirit of impartiality and of just discrimination concerning 
the merits and defects of the generals who led the armies of the North and South. 
— Army and Navy Journal. 



PATROCLUS AND PENELOPE — A 
CHAT IN THE SADDLE 

Illustrated with fourteen Phototypes of the Horse in Motion 
8vo, gilt top, half-roan. $3.00 

The same, with fourteen Drawings by Grey Parker from the 
Instantaneous Photographs. 16mo. $1.25 

Colonel Dodge's book is liberalizing. It may be both warmly and safely com- 
mended to all lovers of horses, and to all who ride. — Atlantic Monthly. 
The spirit of a sportsman pervades it throughout. — The Field (London). 



The Campaign of Chancellorsville 

BY 

THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE, United States Aemy. 



One Volume. 8vo. 



With four large topographical maps {colored), showing the natural and artificial 

features of the theatre of operations, and the positions of the various Federal 

and Confederate corps, at different periods of the conflict. 

NOTICES. 

" The work is meant to be a contribution to scientific military criticism, and it is 
that and something more. It is a detailed history of the most anomalous of the mili- 
tary operations of the war, a minute, accurate, and fair exposition of the strategy 
employed on both sides, and a singularly graphic account of a battle which for 
picturesqueness is scarcely surpassed by any affair in ancient or modern times. 
.... We have so frequently censured both Northern and Southern writers for 
partisanship of feeling, for rancor and ill-temper in treating of events of the war, 
that we cannot omit to say a word in praise of this author's admirable spirit. From 
first to last he is impartial, not only in his statements of fact, but equally in his 
incidental comments upon the character of officers and the conduct of troops on either 
side. His faith in the righteousness of the Union cause is implicit; but it does not in 
the least blind him to the perfect sincerity and devotion of the Southerners. His admi- 
ration for the high character, the soldierly qualities, and the heroic spirit of the 
officers and soldiers of the Union is enthusiastic; but he manifests a generous 
enthusiasm of admiration also for the character and genius of Lee, Jackson and Stuart, 
and for the courage, endurance, and spirit of the Confederate veterans." —New York 
Evening Post. 

" It is not easy to say what part of this book is best, for it is all good. . . . The 
book is the production of a man with a clear military head, who seems to have 
possessed himself completely of his subject. The student of military history will find 
it very valuable, and the general reader will find it interesting in the extreme." — 
The Nation. 

" The work is a real contribution to the history of the war, and deserves a hearty 
reception." — Boston Advertiser. 

"Among the best of the numerous contributions to the history of the war." — 
Chicago Tribune. 

" The book is thoroughly well done" — Literary World. 

" He has performed his task with conspicuous fairness, fidelity, and success." — 
Army and Navy Journal. 

" We do not hesitate to pronounce it one of the ablest, fairest, and most valuable 
books that we have seen." — Southern Historical Papers. 

"For this valuable service he is entitled to the thanks of military readers."— Journal 
of the Military Service Institution. 

" Of prime historical value." — Atlanta Constitution. 

" As interesting as a novel." — Providence Press. 

" A very clear and straightforward account." — Cincinnati Gazette. 

" The author has done his work with judgment unusually impartial, and ability 
much above the average." — Philadephia Times. 

"It will attract the attention of readers by the careful study which it presents of 
alljjphases of the movement, and by the apparent purpose to be just to all concerned." 
— Boston Journal. 

" Not only all soldiers who participated in the campaign will be interested in it, bat 
J students of American history as well." — Pittsburgh Telegraph. 

For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, prepaid, on receipt of the price, by the Publishers, 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 



A BIED'S-EYE VIEW 

OF 

OUR CIVIL WAR. 



THEODOEE AYEAULT DODGE, 

United States Abmy. 

One Volume, Octavo, with Four Maps and Thirty-eight Battle-Plans. $3.00. 

In one volume, in easy chapters, and so illustrated by battle-charts and maps that 
the layman as readily follows the current of events as the soldier, Colonel Dodge has 
given us a concise and entirely impartial history of the war ; and by casting aside un- 
important detail, one which is comprehensive and full of suggestiveness. 

The object, conduct, and results of each larger campaign are critically explained, and 
the salient qualities of every army commander of North and South are vividly por- 
trayed. The strategic and tactical manoeuvres are clearly pointed out, but in so simple 
a manner as not to confuse the non-military reader. 

Marginal dates and accurate statistics of numbers engaged or lost on either side 
make it a valuable work of reference. An original glossary of military terms used, 
and a copious index, complete the volume. 

The book is necessary to every American library, and is especially recommended for 
higher schools. It is the only history of the war in one volume which can be relied on 
to give an entirely impartial, accurate, and easily understood narrative of the great 
struggle. 

" The author is well equipped for his work, which he has executed with conscien- 
tious fidelity. The book is written in a spirit of impartiality and of just discrimina- 
tion concerning the merits and defects of the generals who led the armies of the North 
and South." — Army and Navy Journal. 

" It is really an important popular work, — popular, that is to say, in the good sense." 
— New York Times. 

" In a word, his book is a model of good taste and intelligence. The book should be 
placed in every school library." — Boston Advertiser. 

" The style is simple and clear, the tone elevated and fair, the conception of military 
operations comprehensive, and the criticisms on them judicious. The book is evi- 
dently as much the work of an experienced soldier as of a well-informed author." — 
Nation. 

" "We were prepared to find a well-written, calm, and unusually fair book; we have 
not been disappointed, . . . and we do not hesitate to commend the book most 
warmly as the work of an able, painstaking soldier, who has honestly endeavored to 
ascertain and frankly to tell the truth about the war." — Southern Historical Papers. 

"A. remarkably clear, concise, and readable history, suited to the wants of the 
adult civilian reader. The comments upon strategy, tactics, and the characteristics of 
prominent generals, although terse, are always weighty and suggestive. Its most con- 
spicuous merit is its clearness." — New York Tribune. 

" A very useful and attractive volume. The material of the work well serves to 
consolidate and orient the knowledge of what was done in the Great Rebellion, and of 
those who did it." — Journal Military Service Institution. 

" The object has been admirably attained. Col. Dodge's short, crisp sentences, and 
his pen-pictures, done with a free hand, make the volume very interesting reading. 
The work is thoroughly done, and as fair as it is able." — Manhattan. 
For sale by Booksellers. Sent, postpaid, on receipt of the price, by the Publishers, 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 



PATROCLTJS AND PENELOPE: 

A CHAT IN THE SADDLE. 













£RAY- PAKKEf 



ff£y^%\* 



From the Instantaneous Photograph of Patroclus and Owner. 
BY 

THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE, 

BREVET LIEUTENANT-COLONEL TJNITED STATES AMY (RETIRED LIST) J AUTHOR OF 

' THE CAMPAIGN OF CHANCELLORSVILLE," "A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW 

OF THE CIVIL WAR," ETC., ETC. 



PATROCLUS AND PENELOPE: 

A CHAT IN THE SADDLE. 



Since — as it has been our fortune to be long engaged about horses 

— we consider that we have acquired some knowledge of horsemanship ; 
we desire also to intimate to the younger part of our friends how we 
think thai they may bestow their attention on horses to the best advantage. 

— Xenophon on Horsemanship. 

This book is written from an experience extending over thirty years, — 
in the English hunting field, the Prussian army, the plains of the West, 
active service during the Civil War, and daily riding everywhere. The 
author has studied equestrianism as an art, and, though believing in 
the Haute Acole of Baucher, enjoys with equal zest a ride to hounds or a 
galop on the Western prairies. 

The experienced equestrian will be delighted by the author's breezy talk 
and thorough knowledge of his subject. The young horseman who may 
have purchased a colt just broken to harness can by the use of its hints 
make him as clever as Patroclus. Even the man who rides but a dozen 
times a year will be interested in the book, while the every-day reader 
will be charmed by its simplicity, geniality, and heartiness. 



AMERICAN NOTICES. 

Col. Dodge has given the beginner in the art of horsemanship the 
best possible introduction to his pleasurable task. The author has had a 
much wider store of practical experience in horsemanship than his pre- 
decessors in this field of instruction. — New York Evening Post. 

The practical horseman cannot fail to admire the firm, easy seat 
which the beginner will do well to copy : " Patroclus " is ably described, 
and, if up to what is said of him, must be a gem of the first water. — 
New York Times. 

It is written in a frank, refined, and genial style that is peculiarly in- 
gratiating ; while underlying this is a thorough knowledge of the subject 
treated. — Dial (Chicago). 

Col. Dodge's book is liberalizing. It may be both warmly and safely 
commended to all lovers of horses and to all who ride. — Atlantic 
Monthly. 

Col. Dodge is an expert in all the finesse and paraphernalia of horses 
and horseback-riding. . . . The advice is sound and simple, and very 
direct. — The Critic (New York). 



It abounds in excellent suggestions, the fruit of sound experience, 
accurate observations, and good common-sense. It is an excellent book 
for the amateur. Withal it is told in a pleasant, easy way, as if it had 
been written in the saddle instead of at the desk. — Christian Register 
(Boston) . 

The chapters on the training of horse and rider are full of sound infor- 
mation, clearly stated, and practical to the last degree. — Journal of 
Military Service Institution (New York) . 

A lover of horses will find in this volume a book which will give him 
unlimited pleasure. — The Book-Buyer (New York). 

This book will be given an enthusiastic welcome by all lovers of eques- 
trianism. — Chicago Journal. 

The hearty animal spirits which galop through its pages are catching. 
— New York Mail and Express. 

Col. Dodge is a charming teacher. — Boston Herald. 



ENGLISH NOTICES. 

Col. Dodge has a right to offer himself as an authority on horseman- 
ship. . . . We recommend Col. Dodge's work as one of the most 
important and valuable treatises upon the art of riding that we have in 
our language. — Saturday Review (London). 

Amongst experts Col. Dodge enjoys the reputation of being one of 
the very first horsemen. . . . The book is not one to be read 
through and put aside, but to be kept on a convenient shelf for reference. 
— Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (London). 

Col. Dodge has handled his subject with an ability beyond the average, 
and is also very amusing.in his lectures. — Pall Mall Gazette. 

A very learned and charming book. We may very well recommend 
it as a delightful one to all who care for horses. — London Graphic. 

The spirit of a sportsman pervades it throughout. There is very 
much that is worth reading and thinking over. — The Field (London). 

Published in two styles. Illustrated with fourteen phototypes of the 
horse in motion, one volume, octavo, gilt top, half roan, $3.00. Illus- 
trated with fourteen drawings by Gray Parker from the instantaneous 
photographs, 12mo, half roan, $1.25. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN, & COMPANY, PUBLISHEES, 



